Motives for attending live stand-up comedy: an audiences' perspective

Abstract

Traditional arts institutions like theatres are battling to sustain audiences due to an abundance of competing leisure and entertainment activities as well as fewer of the young generations showing interest in live theatre performances. Arts institutions are therefore increasingly focused on capturing, satisfying and sustaining audience by means of understanding their audience’s needs in terms of art consumption. Research exploring performing arts consumption from an audiences’ perspective is, however, very limited. Indeed, relatively little is known about what really is of significance for audiences when they visit the theatre and is particularly true in the South African theatre context. Furthermore, motives appear to differ from genre to genre suggesting that arts audiences are heterogeneous in terms of their motives. This article therefore explores the motives of a particular theatre genre: live stand-up comedy as this genre, despite being an increasing popular mode of entertainment, has been overlooked in most theatre studies. The research findings contribute to understanding the profile and motives of the comedy theatre market in South Africa, and the study narrows the gap in arts literature regarding theatre audiences for a particular type of theatre production. It is suggested that knowledge of audiences’ motives be used as a differentiating strategy to assist in creating a competitive advantage over the abundance of permanent live stand-up comedy venues in Cape Town, South Africa.