On Scent in Theatre Audience Research: Sensory Mining and Olfactory Archives

Abstract

This article uses netnographic research methods, as a form of olfactory sensory mining, to investigate the smell-based experiences of audience members at Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (2011). In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the field of theatre audience research, as well as intervening in archival questions surrounding the documentation of ephemeral, olfactory, experiences. It problematizes the supposedly ephemeral nature of scents in relation to the supposed ephemerality of the live performance experience and, thus, also extends research on Punchdrunk’s works by suggesting the potential the olfactory has for triggering the re-immersive experience. This article lays new groundwork for how theatre researchers can study the relationship between the live-performance experience and smell, as well as signalling the need for further olfactory sensory mining in the field of audience studies.

Keywords:

• Rebecca
• Macbeth
• Sleep No More
• Punchdrunk
• smell

Notes on Contributor

Freya Verlander is based in the Theatre & Performance Studies department at the University of Warwick. Her first monograph (Skin)Aesthetics and Performance: A Study of Skin(s) in Spectatorship is in development. It investigates how the skin functions as the site/sight/sound/taste/smell of spectatorial engagement, (dis)connection, and cross-sensory experience in works of performance. Freya’s wider research interests are, broadly, in exploring the interfaces between science, the senses, and different modes of performance. She is interested in the intersections of public health and performance with a focus on the ‘performance’ of public health and safety.

Notes

1. Ben Walmsley, Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts: A Critical Analysis, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 125.

2. At the time of writing, in early 2021, this forum, and related threads, were open access.

3. See, for example, Kirsty Sedgman on the strengths and limitations of mixed method approaches to audience research – including the lack of scholarly intervention in online discourse (meaning both that the material is organic but also that no further clarification can be sought), and also the way in which researchers acknowledge that there is no one meaning but rather a process of working towards (different) meanings and understandings of works. Kirsty Sedgman, ‘On Rigour in Theatre Audience Research’, Contemporary Theatre Review 29, no.4 (2019): 462-79 (476).

4. See, for example, Maggie B. Gale and Ann Featherstone’s ‘The Imperative of the Archive: Creative Archive Research’, in Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, eds. Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 17-40.

5. Abigail de Kosnik, Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016).

6. Anna Chen, ‘Perfume and Vinegar: Olfactory Knowledge, Remembrance, and Recordkeeping’, The American Archivist 79, no. 1, (2016): 103-20 (111).

7. Amy Bruckman, ‘Ethical Guidelines for Research Online’, (2002) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/ethics (accessed January 14, 2023); see, for example, Kirsty Sedgman’s ‘List of Sources for Discourse Analysis’, in The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 166.

8. Ilka Gleibs ‘The Importance of Informed Consent in Social Media Research’ LSE Impact Blog, 2015, blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofso-cialsciences/2015/03/27/the-importance-of-informed- consent-in-social-media-research (accessed January 14, 2023).

9. Josephine Machon, The Punchdrunk Encyclopaedia (New York: Routledge, 2018), 250.

10. Ibid., 13.

11. Ibid.

12. Keren Zaiontz, ‘Narcissistic Spectatorship in Immersive and One-On-One Performance’, Theatre Journal 66, no. 3 (2014): 405-25 (407).

13. Ibid., 410.

14. Ibid., 408.

15. Holly Maples, ‘The Erotic Voyeur: Sensorial Spectatorship in Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man’, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 4, no.1 (2016): 119-33 (119).

16. Ibid., 127.

17. See for example, Ana Pais, ‘The Paradox of Immersion: Mechanisms of Contagion and Separation in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More’, in Theatres of Contagion: Transmitting Early Modern to Contemporary Performance, ed. Fintan Walsh (London: Methuen Drama, 2019), 155-69; Adam Alston, Beyond Immersive Theatre: Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Alston explores the politics of participation in Punchdrunk’s works. He argues that audience free-roaming is a political aesthetic which encourages individualism. Alston problematizes the attendant questions of freedom and inequality that accompany what he terms ‘entrepreneurial participation’ (113). Similarly, Zaiontz problematizes ‘narcissistic spectatorship’ as a mode of engagement that reflects the neoliberalizing of audiences who are not prompted to question the frameworks/conditions of their participation.

18. In this article, I’m talking specifically about the accessibility of olfactory experience for Punchdrunk spectators; however, it’s worth noting that there are wider issues of accessibility surrounding Punchdrunk’s works including, for example, the prohibitive ticket prices.

19. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (London: Virago Press, 2003), 33.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 192.

22. William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5. 1. 33.

23. Ibid., 5. 1. 48–49.

24. Matthew Reason, ‘Writing the Olfactory in the Live Performance Review’, Performance Research 8, no.3 (2003): 73-84 (79).

25. A. S. Barwich, Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2020), 116.

26. Susan L. Feagin, ‘Olfaction and Space in the Theatre’, British Journal of Aesthetics 58, no. 2 (2018): (131-146) 138.

27. Ibid.

28. Barwich, Smellosophy, 91-92.

29. Feagin, ‘Olfaction and Space’, 141.

30. See for example, Kirsty Sedgman, ‘On Rigour in Theatre Audience Research’, Contemporary Theatre Review 29, no. 4 (2019): 462-479 (467); Helen Freshwater, Theatre & Audience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1; Josephine Machon, Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 74-75; Doris Kolesch and Hubert Knoblauch ‘Audience Emotions’, in Affective Societies: Key Concepts, eds. Jan Slaby and Christian von Scheve (London: Routledge, 2019), 252-264.

31. While I focus specifically on individual differences in olfactory perceptions of Sleep No More, wider research in olfactory studies. See, for example, Hsuan L. Hsu’s The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics (New York: New York University Press, 2020), specifically the chapter ‘Decolonizing Smell’ – considers the how the sense of smell has been colonized and how processes of colonization have, effectively, forced an anosmia (or loss of smell) of sorts; see also, Chen, ‘Perfume and Vinegar’ who explains that ‘studying [scent’s] unique ability to reconstruct past narratives can sharpen our awareness of the limits of what traditional archives collect and remember and, consequently, which communities they serve’ (111). Reason also suggests how language ‘demarcat[es] cultural perceptions of the value of smell in performance’, in ‘Writing the Olfactory’, 78.

32. Barwich, Smellosophy, 12.

33. Ibid., 93-94.

34. Sedgman, The Reasonable Audience, 17.

35. Sedgman acknowledges online posters’ ‘right as internet users to post on social media and internet chatrooms without fear that our often off- the-cuff statements might be quoted out of their intended context’. Ibid., 107. Although the material in this Twitter exchange is not of a sensitive nature, both comments are off-the-cuff, and likely meant as humorous reflections as opposed to a serious critical commentary on others, so the removal of identifying Twitter handles was appropriate. The low level of disguise is appropriate for the TripAdvisor review which follows because it was posted to a site which is intended to advise others on events and places.

36. Rose Biggin, ‘Reading Fan Mail: Communicating Immersive Experience in Punchdrunk’s Faust and The Masque of the Red Death’, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 301-17, (301).

37. Rose Biggin, Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 208.

38. Barwich, Smellosophy, 119.

39. Ibid.,120.

40. Du Maurier, Rebecca, 40.