"Introduction: Attention, Agency, Affect: In the flow of Performing Audiences"

This introduction focuses on the fractious, contested concept of ‘participation’ as it has emerged from the recent cross-fertilisation of literary and cultural studies with an array of performance theories and practices. Drawing on the ‘travelling’ and interstitial concepts of performance and performativity it provides a concise overview of all the different contributions (ranging from installation artworks and reality shows to photography, embodied narrative and antithetical forms of theatre) in terms of a limited but significant sample of the contemporary inter- or trans-disciplinary dialogue tensely taking place among different artistic and critical perspectives on the issue of performing audiences.