Theatre audiences already vote with their wallets and their feet, but is there a case for giving them a more participatory role? What prompts the question is the arrival at North London's Tricycle of Richard Norton-Taylor's Called to Account - a piece of verbatim theatre which puts the case for and against the prosecution of Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq, and which gives the audience on the night the final vote.
Strangely enough, western drama starts with an act of democracy - even if it is executed by the performers rather than the audience. In the final play of Aeschylus's Oresteia, the character of Orestes is indicted for matricide. A jury of Athenian citizens hears the arguments and then casts its vote. These days, the tendency is to play this ironically since, after a split vote, Orestes is acquitted by Athena who divinely presides over the court. For some, this is the first example of the rigged vote. Personally, I am always moved by the sight of the citizens casting their pebbles into the appropriate urns: this is where the Athenian Areopagus, and the democratic principle, actually starts.
But how many plays can you think of where the audience itself votes? As a child, I remember being taken to an American courtroom drama - could it possibly have been The Trial of Mary Dugan? - where a jury selected from the audience decided on the night whether the defendant was guilty or innocent. The American musical Edwin Drood, based on the unfinished Dickens novel, also allows the audience a final say on the murderer's identity. And in Alan Ayckbourn's Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays, spectators are allowed to choose which room in a Gothic villa the protagonists should enter next; though my recollection is that the questions were posed in such a way as to dictate the answer.
Since we live in the age of interactive TV and instant blogging, should the principle be extended? In the majority of cases, I doubt whether audience voting is relevant. I'm not sure I want to have a say in whether Fortinbras should be elected King of Denmark, Isabella should marry the Duke in Measure for Measure, or Hedda Gabler's husband should be indicted for culpable neglect. In modern drama, the unresolved ending is also part of the pleasure; in The Caretaker, for example, Pinter leaves open the question of whether the dirty old tramp will, or even should, be kicked back on to the street.
But audiences are changing. With the development of a new kind of forensic, factual drama, such as that pioneered by the Tricycle, it is perfectly legitimate to have a vote. The danger, as with the potential prosecution of Tony Blair, is that we go into the theatre with our minds already made up. But one reason for looking forward to Called To Account is to see whether, after having weighed up the evidence, one's judgment is actively swayed.
I can see the principle being extended to other topics. How about the audience casting votes on a docudrama about the saturation bombing of Dresden during the second world war? Critics, in a sense, already have the vote in that they rush to instant judgment. But should the audience be enfranchised and asked to register its opinion about moral and political issues at the end of a play? I'm not wholly sure. Perhaps the best answer is to put it to the vote?
