Proven: theatre-goers seek intellectual satisfaction and hardly ever read reviews

Drama reviews mainly fill a need among artists and journalists. Newspaper readers hardly use them. In London, this has been investigated. Only 36 per cent of theatre-goers say they read reviews. Much more value fans place on tips from friends and family.

Last Saturday at Amsterdam's De Balie debate centre, there was a discussion between theatre makers, programmers and daily newspaper journalists about the phenomenon of "stars" or "balls" over theatre reviews. As to be expected was most theatre makers didn't like those crude qualifications, while the arts chief heartily defended them and commercial theatre used them gratefully.

That commercial theatre also noted something else: for that DeLaMartheatre audience, reviews play a secondary role anyway. "On the contrary, most audiences of our performances like to come to see things that reviewers often find corny or bourgeois".

As a matter of fact, that reviewers would have become more superficial, and that there is less coverage of theatre in the daily papers, turned out to be only partly true. In a Big data survey reviewer Simon van den Berg counted that over 5,000 stars had been handed out in the past two years. And that by far the majority of reviewers rated a performance 3 out of five stars. 1-star dregs, or five-star toppers were hardly there in the past two years. That could mean that either the reviewers see mediocre and reasonable theatre all year, or that they dare not take a stand.

But be that as it may: so the public is not bothered. That I experienced myself in a series of interviews For the trade magazine Theatre Maker. 12 spectators, count among the 30,000 heavy users who go to the theatre more than 10 times a year independently stated that they never actually read reviews. They also did not know individual reviewers, and let past experiences, familiarity with actors and attractive stories determine their choice of performances. Above all, they invariably chose a building rather than a performance. Theatregoers do not go to a fringe venue, and vice versa.

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These findings now find support in the British research, which has taken place in recent years, and will continue in the coming years. In in-depth interviews, workshops and surveys, the researchers get a picture of spectators of the more serious theatre in the British capital. Their primary concern is how spectators experience theatre, and what they remember about a performance. Spectators almost unanimously appear to find the immediate live experience most important. The 'immersive' nature, which also plays a role in video games, was mainly remembered thanks to sound.

A few months after the performance, it appears that mainly the content remains: people indicated that they were still thinking about things that had been said, or shown, in the performance. A year after attending, it was mainly the text that remained in memory.

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The researchers make a challenging suggestion, following their findings: theatres should actually give more attention in their marketing to the intellectual aspects of a performance, because that is what spectators appear to value most, in the long run. In the same context, it would be good to offer spectators more aftercare, by approaching them later with information about what they have seen and experienced.

In that regard, among 36 per cent of the heavy users who did occasionally read a review, that they did so mainly in retrospect.

This should have consequences for the way media deal with it. On an online medium like Culture Press, we already notice that this archiving function is important. The first wave of 'sharers' and 'visitors' are usually among the makers and PR departments. Much later and more constant is the share of visitors who look around for information afterwards. And those looking for interpretation and reflection.

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