Anthropological Identification of the Theater Audiences with an Attitude to Understand the Cultural Demands (A Case Study of Shahr Theater (City Theater) and Talare Vahdat (Unity Hall)) Sharareh Jalali

In the present research, we have neither been pursuing to have apathological study of the audience crises not to search for approaches toabsorb audiences in theater but through an anthropological attitude andusing the components of this field , it has tried to put forth interlinkedquestions to gain a relative understanding of the people who form theaudience population of the theater at present time, those who refer to the"Theater Shahr" (City Theater) and "TalarVahdat" (Unity Hall) as the twomain poles of theater nationwide. On this basis, 70 people have beenchosen randomly out of the audiences with regard to their age and genderand have been interviewed with each of them for about 40 to 50 minutes.The research methodology was qualitative and the instrument was thesemi-structured interview. After summing up the interviews andclassifying the motifs, the data were interpreted. The results show that,the most of the audiences see theater merely for filling their leisure timerather than cultural demands. If they were not restricted economically,then they would have preferred trip or other recreations. The intervieweescited a total of ten reasons for going to the theater, the most important ofwhich was "purely for leisure". Theater audiences have similar tastes andconsequently the same cultural preferences. Over 40% of the concernedstatistical population have a high rate of objectified cultural capital andsuffer from poverty in the embodied cultural capital. Despite to thementality ruling over the atmosphere of the theater, more than 60% of theaudiences are comprised of the graduates or students of fields of studyapart from art.