Exploring Audience Interaction in Theatres

Date

20 SEP 2025 26 SEP 2025

Week

Week 1

Unit

Final Major Project

Brief

Design an intervention that reshapes user-to-user interaction in public spaces.

In short

Shifted my FMP focus to the emotions and friction between audience members.
Framed disruption through Korea’s terms Gwan-keu and Corpse watching.
Collected 14 stories and chose a satirical prototyping direction.

Looking Through a UX Lens

I kept returning to the question: What can I actually do as a UX designer? While developing ideas around performing elsewhere, rewinding, and theatre seating, I realised that I am neither a performance designer nor a furniture designer. As a UX designer, where should I position myself, and through what perspective should I approach this issue? These questions led me to focus more closely on the emotions that audience members genuinely experience within this context.

Narrowed the research focus towards theatre experience, especially audience experience. Image Credit: Author

Interactions Between Audience Members

Audience members gather at a fixed time and place with a strong intention to fully enjoy the content. Everyone wants to immerse themselves in what is happening on stage or on screen. Shared reactions — laughing, crying, being surprised — can create positive moments of collective experience. However, the moment disruptive behaviour enters the space, that immersion quickly breaks.

Typical examples include using a mobile phone in a dark auditorium, talking to the person next to you, or kicking and repeatedly nudging the seat in front. In countries with active performing arts scenes such as the US, the UK, Japan, Australia and Korea, these incidents are often reported in the media.

Korean Neologisms: Gwan-keu and Corpse Watching

In Korea, the term “관크 gwan-keu” emerged around 2011 to describe moments when immersion is disrupted due to inconsiderate audience behaviour. Around 2016, within musical theatre fandoms, a contrasting trend developed: encouraging audience members to remain completely still throughout the performance, almost like a corpse, so as not to disturb anyone. This behaviour came to be known as “시체관극 corpse watching”.

If gwan-keu is used to call out those who break shared audience etiquette, corpse watching critiques the overly rigid culture of behavioural expectations. These two extremes became meaningful keywords for shaping this project.

Gathering Experiences

To identify potential design intervention points, I conducted directed storytelling with 14 participants. They were asked to recall their theatre or cinema experiences and respond to questions such as:
Have you witnessed disruptive behaviour?
How did you respond?
Have you ever been told off for such behaviour yourself?
How did that make you feel?

Conducted interviews about being disturbed by someone in the theatre, or disturbing others. Photo Credit: Author

Collected theatre experience stories through directed storytelling to explore audience experience. Image Credit: Author

The most frequently mentioned cases were mobile phone use and restless movement from young children. Most participants said they avoided direct confrontation and instead expressed discomfort through minimal cues such as glances or small gestures. Many felt that stepping in directly could create a new disturbance for other audience members who had done nothing wrong, which they saw as an interesting characteristic of theatre environments.

Analysed responses from directed storytelling using an affinity diagram. Image Credit: Author

Feedback & Reflection

This week, I received positive feedback on shifting the project away from simple seat improvement towards a broader exploration of social interaction and disturbance in public spaces. I was also encouraged to expand my observations to other public spaces such as public transport.

Another suggestion was to examine the issue through a critical, humorous, or satirical approach rather than aiming for a direct solution. Revealing social discomfort and unspoken rules could lead to more meaningful insights.

In terms of design direction, feedback emphasised the value of more extreme prototypes as tools for experimental exploration. It was also noted that reactions to disruptive behaviour vary depending on social dynamics—power relations, gender, social norms—which offers another rich area for inquiry.

“Don’t solve the problem, amplify it to critique it.”

Rather than providing a straightforward answer, I began to see the potential for UX designers to surface, question, and critically probe such issues. In the next stage, I plan to develop low-fidelity prototypes to translate these ideas into experiential form.

Reference

Goffman, E. 1967, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Anchor Books, New York.
Hall, E.T. 1966, The Hidden Dimension, Doubleday, Garden City, NY.
Hall, E.T. 1976, Beyond Culture, Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, NY.
Monaghan, J. & Just, P. 2000, Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 34–52.