Accurately measuring the audience response during a performance is a difficult task. This is particularly the case for connected performances. In this paper, we staged a connected performance in which a remote audience enjoyed the performance in real-time. Both objective (galvanic skin response and behaviours) and subjective (interviews) responses from the live and remote audience members were recorded. To capture galvanic skin response, a group of self-built sensors was used to record the electrical conductance of the skin. The results of the measurements showed that both the live and the remote audience members had a similar response to the connected performance even though more vivid artistic artefacts had a stronger effect on the live audience. Some technical issues also influenced the experience of the remote audience. In conclusion we found that the remoteness had little influence on the connected performance.

This article presents the results of modelling audience response to new types of networked theatre plays. As the main contribution of the work we introduce two types of metrics: intensity, relating to how intensively co-present and remote aspects of a performance are rated, and cohesion, relating to how a performance as a whole, the combination of co-present and remote aspects, affects an audience. In particular, we model audience response based on two in the wild evaluations, staged by a low budget theatre company, a streamed and a distributed performance. The streamed performance is similar to NT Live, where a theatre play is delivered to other theatres with an audience. The distributed performance, on the other hand, connects actors in two different theatres (with audiences) creating one single play. The streamed performance was experienced as less intense as well as less cohesive by the remote audience, whilst the distributed performance integrated co-present and remote aspects tightly. Remote aspects of the distributed performance were still experienced as less intense, but the performance as a whole was highly cohesive. Apart from the identification of these two new metrics (intensity and cohesion), based on our experiences we argue that an innovative way of bundling relevant emerging technologies is needed to give a voice to the, as yet silent, remote audience.