Audience Resonance: Merging Perceptions and Theory and Context in Developing Television Drama

Excerpts from the document follow:

Abstract:

"The process of engaging members of the target audience in the development of a weekly, South African youth television drama series (Tsha Tsha) is described. This involved focus groups to: develop understanding of the characters and the dynamics of the relationships between them; test the plausibility of drama events against the reference point of life in a small town in the Eastern Cape; and assess the appeal of the script to the target audience.

The first part of the five-page paper explores the facilitation challenges involved in this activity and highlights key learnings about use of focus groups for this purpose. A theoretical perspective on the attempt to build audience resonance is provided, which utilises key ideas from the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, whose ideas have been influential in the fields of critical pedagogy and participatory theatre in the developing world.

The second part of the paper points to the incommensurability between mass media forms of delivery and the theoretical framework used to explain the use of participatory methods for developing the drama, as described in the first part of the paper. A
theoretical rapprochement is suggested, which has implications for how we develop scripts for use in mass media productions. Some of these implications are described and it is suggested that many of the challenges and problems faced in the unsettled
exchanges between the production company and the research organisation that produced the drama, are explained as a failure to identify and address these issues...

Recommendations:

1. It is important not to reduce meaning to approval - Liking, approval, contextual authenticity are useful but limited indicators for understanding the
   potential of a script as a generative code for unpacking meaning....
2. Test the drama not the individuals script -
   It is difficult for members of a target audience to anticipate the translation of a script into an on-air
   drama...
3. Consider whether an issue needs to be problematised and when it needs to be normatised - ...Not every social issue can be problematised and it has been a constant source of conflict between producers and script developers that whereas it is important to ignore issues that have previously been well dealt with it is important not to introduce issues and events that require problematisation without dealing with them...
4. Be aware of the issues faced in spacing between ‘problematising’ and ‘resolution’ -
   We have found negative responses to problematising of situations in contexts...
5. Assess the broader social context of the drama - ...The effectiveness of the drama relies on developments beyond the scope of the drama
   and it is important to consider these factors in understanding the appropriateness, timing and
   ultimately potential value of the drama.
6. It is important to educate your writers and script development respondents in the theoretical
   framework of the intervention..."