With live performance audience research frequently relying on cultural organisations to facilitate access to their audiences, this article addresses the issues involved in evidencing spectators' responses via discursive methodologies. Recalling a series of empirical projects conducted over the past ten years with a range of theatre practitioners, it examines the conflicts involved in carrying out scholarly studies of audience reception against cultural organisations' pressures to produce their own ongoing audience evaluations. Examining key concerns about audience research raised by creative practitioners in varying theatrical contexts, from site-specific to building-based work, it addresses the difficulties of understanding live performance reception and aesthetic experience via impact frameworks. It begins by situating these three operations in the context of Knowledge Exchange (KE) between academics within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and those in the creative industry sector.

Through their 'Theatre Map of Wales', launched in 2009 and running between 2010-11, National Theatre Wales developed a reputation for theatrical innovation. In their first season the company worked in a series of locations throughout Wales, producing thirteen shows, one per month, many incorporating mobile elements. By reading across responses to five of these National Theatre Wales productions -Shelf Life (Swansea), For Mountain, Sand & Sea (Barmouth), The Weather Factory (Penygroes), Outdoors (Aberystwyth), and The Passion (Port Talbot) -I address the extent to which affording audiences greater agency over their mobility might lead to increased participation possibilities. While participatory performances are frequently praised for offering experiential freedom, this is in tension with the awareness that theatre exists within a managed framework. The research reported in this article demonstrates how an audience's awareness of structural constraints can be contemporaneous with pleasure taken in feelings of formlessness. It concludes by considering what it means when audiences talk about 'getting' a performance -in terms of understanding its potential, and appreciating its value -as well as what happens when they don't.

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Researching theatre audiences using empirical methodologies is not a neutral act. Any attempt to capture evidence of how audiences engage with and value culture is inherently problematic. This article argues that while it is possible (even desirable) to capture information about the varying ways diverse spectators find meaning and value in their performance encounters, it is also necessary to be critical about the kinds of knowledge that discursive audience research is able to produce. Media and cultural studies scholars have for decades been grappling with the epistemological, ethical, and methodological implications of capturing qualitative indicators of experience. Rather than a positivistic pursuit of objective 'truth', audience research can more usefully be understood as a process of interpretation. By bringing the distinct field of 'audience studies' into conversation with theatre and performance studies, this article hopes to facilitate a move toward more rigorous audience research.

This article proposes a definition and terminology for identifying and analysing a concept of institutional persona in relation to theatre. The essay posits the theatre institution as an example of a ‘composite persona’, whereby cultural value is produced through the interplay between theatre as building, theatre as organisation, and theatre as event. Using the case-study of Bristol Old Vic, I examine how executives and practitioners involved in a specific historic theatre ensured its post-war survival in the 1940s by connecting the prestigious heritage of a local landmark with the national reputation of two London-based organisations. I suggest that theatre institutions offer a particularly rich investigative ground for the application of persona study theory in their need to mobilise individual and organisational personas for the purposes of reinventing a ‘good story’ and brand over time.