Theatre audience in Serbia

Drama audience

Slobodan, Mrđa

Kultura

126-1

277

296

0023-5164

http://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%269080&page=0&sor...

2010-2021/06/18/09:00:29

Theatre Audience in Serbia was a project of the 2009 Centre for Studies in Cultural Development activity plan. Its first phase devoted to drama audience is completed. Its second phase will deal with the opera and ballet audience (the Belgrade National Theatre). This paper presents findings of the research of the drama theatre audience of all professional theatres in Serbia. The analysis of the structure of drama audience of all professional theatres in Serbia resulted in establishment of all its relevant socio-demographic characteristics. Females dominate in drama audience (almost 2/3) over males (a bit more than 1/3). The majority of audience is 31 to 45 of age; minority of above 65. The fact that the majority of audience is 31-45 of age (27.1%) shows that almost two thirds (65.3%) of the drama audience belongs to the 19-45 age group. The majority of audience has university education (43.1 %), 27.7% secondary, and 11.7% higher. The number of M.A.s is only 7.6 %, while the other education levels individually do not exceed three percentage. As for the professional structure, the greatest percentage is of the experts and students. Among the most important findings of the research is that professional theatres in Serbia have the opportunity to improve the number of their audience by higher quality of their work and communication with the public. It is founded that a good Web (Internet) presentation is necessary if a theatre is to follow communication and information trends of the today information society. The professional theatres in Serbia could count on an approximately 15% of regular audience, but also on a twice as much of potential regular one, as a 'reservoir' of a better and more stable attendance. The most usual reasons of random attendance are not related to a theatre activity and its characteristics, but to socio-economic conditions of the audience and dominant social value orientations. We hope that the theatres and their protagonists and the researchers will be the greatest beneficiaries of this research findings. The former to improve their activities; the latter to further investigate this highly important segment of cultural life. When this type of research is obviously rare, the findings of this particular one could contribute to a better understanding of the position and perspectives of theatres in our cultural and social reality, that might lead to their bigger and more stable audiences.