From transaction to enaction: reframing theatre marketing

Drawing from the rich traditions of audience research and performance studies, this thesis proposes that art, and theatre in particular, is not a simple product that provides universal benefits to everyone, but one that relies on the situated interaction of individuals in a particular time and space. Thus, the current dominant transactional marketing model is not fit for purpose and contributes to the neoliberalisation of arts management as a whole – the primary focus of which is the quantification of impacts and communication of reductive benefits to current and potential markets. Instead of seeking to change the nature of theatre as a complex and interactive phenomenon in order to sell it better, this research explores the extent to which theatre marketing can be reframed to take into account theatre’s inherent complexity and embodied meaning and sense-making processes. By applying theories from the enactive school of embodied cognition to the processes of theatre-making, audiencing, arts marketing and our understanding of cultural value, this thesis found that there is significant potential in reframing these terms anew as reliant on embodied and intersubjectively distributed languaging practices of audience, theatre- maker and cultural intermediary. The contribution of this project lies in the novel application of enactive theories to the marketing of live performance, as well as in the methodological framing of facet methodology within an engaged and embodied epistemology, which affords a qualitative mixing of methods within a longitudinal, participatory co-research design. This research thus has far-reaching implications not only for the practices of arts marketing in organisations and the wider sector, but also on our understanding of embodied cognitive processes of meaning and value-making within, and beyond, arts marketing theory, audience studies, and cultural policy.