Abstract

This paper speculates on the future for cultural consumption. One prediction is the emergence of a 'thoughtful consumer', who, disenchanted with passive fun, embraces active learning; others foresee Baudrillard's 'silent majorities', saturated and driven into passivity by a surfeit of image and information. The issue was investigated in the context of the consumption of live drama through theoretical investigation drawing on the work of Bourdieu, and through semi-structured interviews with directors of producing theatres in the north of England. The conclusion was that audiences consume drama in terms of three dimensions: the inspirational, the collective and the symbolic, proliferation of 'core' audiences and a demand on the part of an expanding middle class for authenticity of experience.