Edelman, J., 2025.

Interlude 3: Insights from Theatre Talks in Tyneside

One of the most insightful descriptions of how Tyneside audiences made sense of their theatrical experience came from a survey respondent, who, after completing the STEP survey, sent an unprompted email to the project team to describe her theatrical experience. This email is worth quoting at length both for the clarity of her thinking and the extent to which it resembles other descriptions that were heard in the talks, including the regular reference to Tyneside's beloved football club, Newcastle United: My partner and I have season tickets to watch Newcastle United and go every other week during the football season. I go to the theatre intermittently, while he does not, but we both go to see live music and comedy. I had a spare ticket for Mathew Bourne's Swan Lake (one of my favourite theatre productions). To my surprise my partner Andrew offered to come with me, although I was very hesitant as to whether he would enjoy it. He absolutely loved it, and talked about it for several days afterwards. A few days later we watched another abysmal football match at St. James's Park. At the end Andrew turned to me and said how for a similar amount of money we had watched a whole company of such talented dancers, as well as the inspiring visual scenery, yet that day we had watched such overpaid footballers putting in a lack of effort. He questioned why we rarely go to the theatre, yet unthinkingly go to the football every other week. Straight from the match he marched me down to the theatre to buy more tickets. We ended up joining as friends of the theatre and bought a fortunes [sic] worth of tickets for throughout the year, starting with Pygmalion the following week (Quoted in Edelman, Sorli and Fisher 2014, 27-28).