Robert Viagas' Love Letter To Theatregoers RIGHT THIS WAY: A HISTORY OF THE AUDIENCE Out Now

Finally, a book about the OTHER star of the show ... the audience.

According to one of the theatre's most influential chroniclers, Robert Viagas, when you sit down to watch a play ... movie ... TV show ... concert ... reading .... And these days ... video on your computer, you are taking part in one of the oldest and most meaningful forms of behavior. Being part of an audience is a universal experience, one that has remained a constant feature of human societies even as it has evolved from colosseums to tiny glowing screens.

Right This Way: A History of the Audiencei s a pop-history of audiences through the ages. Delving into the distinctive aspects of what Viagas calls "audiencing."

Viagas is a writer, editor, lecturer, broadcaster, and professor with more than 40 years' experience. As such, he has sat in the audience for more than 2000 Broadway shows, plus uncounted movies, television shows, concerts, Off-Broadway shows, sporting events, podcasts, etc. in his native U.S. and around the world.

Viagas believes that theatre does not happen on the stage. It happens in the hearts and minds of the audience. What happens on the stage is designed to evoke theatre. And that goes for movies, TV, concerts and everything else that is done for an audience.

In Right This Way: A History of the Audience, Viagas walks us through the different types of audiences and the history of their changing behaviors, what science has to say about how our brains respond to what we experience, how technology will continue to shape audiences, and why, during COVID-19, people risked a deadly virus to be part of a crowd. Viagas accessed the minds of all those who have observed audiences - for all sorts of reasons - throughout the decades: critics, performers, scholars, and those who simply wanted to be enlightened and entertained.

You'll never sit and watch something the same way again.

Right This Way: A History of the Audience, is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and where all quality literature is sold.

Viagas has published 21 books on the performing arts, and enjoyed the rare honor of serving on the nominating committee for the Tony Awards 2012-14, after acting as a Tony voter for two decades. He also served as a juror for the Boston Science-Fiction Film Festival, one of the oldest genre festivals in the U.S. He has more than two million words in print, and his writings are cited more than 500 times on Wikipedia.

Viagas was chosen by the original cast of A Chorus Line to tell their story in the book On the Line: The Creation of "A Chorus Line" (Morrow) and by the creators of the original The Fantasticks to tell their story in The Amazing Story of "The Fantasticks" (Citadel). Viagas was also asked by Sony to supply liner notes for the special 40th anniversary re-release of the original cast album of the classic A Chorus Line.