The Audience Council

The Audience Council seeks to connect Ljubljana’s independent performing arts scene in the most basic common denominator that constitutes our endeavor into a meaningful activity, namely the spectator. At each Council we discuss on current performances on the Ljubljana independent scene with the aim to form the space for reflection, discussion and dialogue on what we watched, how we watched and what we saw.

The Council strives to propel an exchange of exclusively spectator’s experience, opinions, reflections and expectations. It’s not about whether these performances are brilliant masterpieces or whether they’re average, it’s not about grades and classifications, it’s not about the overlooked or about the notorious performances, it’s about opening up a space that allows for a difference to emerge, the difference between what we were watching and what we saw. In short, it’s about the spectator’s representation about a performance.

It is our belief that Ljubljana is an exceptionally fertile and productive epicenter of contemporary performing practices, extending well beyond average in their expression. And despite a relatively high number of groups and individuals, whose original and effective creative procedures have gained wide recognition across European stages, Ljubljana’s independent scene still hasn’t succeeded in bringing its artistic expression together to become articulated on a higher creative level. The Audience Council seeks to trigger, establish and maintain the links between various stage practices that gravitate towards the field of contemporary independent performing arts and thus gradually form a stage discourse that once in the future may be recognized as “independent Ljubljana scene.”

We have been organizing public discussions The Audience Council since 2013 in cooperation with Bunker, Maska and City of Women.