The Thin Gray Line

OK, we know, the population is getting older, but how does this affect your audience? Steven Mikulan explains:

"More fundamentally, such electronic diversions and entertainments as the Internet, iPods and other MP3 devices, along with increasingly sophisticated video-gaming technology, are transforming the relationship between product and audience. To paraphrase Norma Desmond, stars remain big while it's the pictures or at least, the screens that get smaller. Even as the Mark Taper Forum sells out performances of The Cherry Orchard, the very nature of audience is changing from a collective of spectators who passively witness someone else's work to a far less definable mass of individuals who cannot sit still but feel the impulse to interact with what they are experiencing. Theater's only solace is that it is not alone in this tectonically changing landscape, as audiences for classical music, jazz, church sermons, and even movies and network TV have continued to shrink. "

People are bored unless they can interact. What was the last sermon you heard, or gave that was interactive?