Audience Body is a theatrical event of shared reading.

It addresses the collective bodily intelligence of a theatre audience and directs the gaze of the audience towards itself.

Video trailer (17 min) here.

It is a performance with no performers.

Instead, it is composed of several reading objects available to the audience. These objects propose different arrangements and experiences:
rolls of paper unwinding,
love letters ripped,
words eaten
and multiple hands immersed in a pool containing underwater books.

It deals with the phenomenon of audience:

the collectivity, the density, the liveness and the related tensions that appear

when we gather in order to receive.

Script, direction: Tuomas Laitinen

Lighting designer: Nanni Vapaavuori

Sound designer: Carolina Jinde

Set designer: Alexander Furunes Eriksson

Graphic designer: Visa Knuuttila

Photography and video: Visa Knuuttila, Tuomas Laitinen

Audience Body premiered on the 10th of November 2022 as part of the program of Reality Research Center at Moving in November festival in Helsinki, in collaboration with Zodiak the Center for New Dance.

It has been performed also on the 9th of September 2023 at New Performance Turku Biennale 2023 and will be performed again in September 2023 at theaterszene europa -festival in studiobuehneköln in Cologne.

It is the second artistic part of Tuomas Laitinen's artistic doctorate at the Performing Arts Research Center Tutke in the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.

The performance is bilingual: all chapters are available both in Finnish and in English.

Photos on this front page by Visa Knuuttila, except for the last one which is by Jesper Dolgov, New Performance Turku Biennale 2023.