Researchers who seek to capture and analyse audiences’ responses are facing a dilemma. In a political climate beleaguered by efforts to delegitimize expertise, what are the implications for a research tradition that seeks to understand cultural value from a range of diverse perspectives? In light of visibility generated by the 2009 publication of Helen Freshwater's Theatre & Audience and the subsequent launch in January 2017 of the international Network for Audience Research in the Performing Arts (iNARPA), the time seems ripe for a detailed critical overview of the audience studies discipline as it has been applied to theatre. In providing that survey, this article contends that the early decades of the new millennium have seen research into arts participation becoming trapped between two colliding agendas. Whereas on the one hand there is a growing pressure to celebrate cultural engagement in all its contradictory forms, there has on the other hand been a simultaneous imperative within the arts to push back against the encroaching de-hierarchization of cultural value beyond critical and scholarly perspectives. By revealing the potentials for and limitations of the field, this article queries how future audience research projects might productively investigate audience experience without diminishing the legitimacy of expert knowledge.

中文翻译：

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反专家时代的观众体验：剧场观众研究调查

试图捕捉和分析受众反应的研究人员正面临两难境地。在被剥夺专业知识的努力所困扰的政治气候中，寻求从各种不同角度理解文化价值的研究传统意味着什么？鉴于 2009 年 Helen Freshwater 的出版物所产生的知名度剧院与观众以及随后于 2017 年 1 月启动的国际表演艺术观众研究网络 (iNARPA)，对观众研究学科进行详细批判性概述的时机似乎已经成熟，因为它已应用于戏剧。在提供该调查时，本文认为，在新千年的最初几十年中，对艺术参与的研究陷入了两个相互冲突的议程之间。一方面，庆祝各种矛盾形式的文化参与的压力越来越大，另一方面，艺术界也同时迫切需要抵制超越批判和学术观点的文化价值去等级化的侵蚀。 . 通过揭示该领域的潜力和局限性，