When you are speaking, you want listeners to understand and respond favorably to what you are saying. An audience is one or more people who come together to listen to the speaker. Understanding the Audience: It’s important to understand the audience and generate a clear message before giving a speech.

Every speech must have a main goal. The goal could be either to persuade, inform, inspire, or entertain the audience. The best speech is a combination of all four, but one should be the backbone of the speech. Be very specific about what you want to achieve.

The body of your speech will consume the largest amount of time to present; and it is the opportunity for you to elaborate on facts, evidence, examples, and opinions that support your thesis statement and do the work you have outlined in the specific purpose statement.

The introduction has five important responsibilities: get the audience ‘s attention, introduce the topic, explain its relevance to the audience, state a thesis or purpose, and outline the main points. By the end of the introduction, you should provide a road map that outlines your main points.

Audience analysis involves identifying the audience and adapting a speech to their interests, level of understanding, attitudes, and beliefs. Taking an audience-centered approach is important because a speaker’s effectiveness will be improved if the presentation is created and delivered in an appropriate manner.

The audience drives every aspect of developing a theatrical performance. Initially, the audience serves the role of driving the content of the play or performance itself. The audience serves the role of driving other decisions as well. For example, producers will consider their audience during casting.

Here are the key obligations an audience has in order to fulfill their “contractual” responsibilities:

1. PAY ATTENTION. Give the presenter the courtesy of paying attention, at least long enough to determine if you are going to receive value.
2. ANSWER QUESTIONS.
3. ASK QUESTIONS.
4. RESPOND.
5. EVALUATE.

Being a good audience member is a characteristic that guarantees your respect in your relevant community. Good listeners are engaged and respectful of the presenter while trying to make a genuine connection, smiling, listening, nodding their heads and make the most of their time spent attending the presentation.

The audience is so important in the definition of your art. As well, you need the people in that culture to see your work because whether they like it or not, they are the ones that complete the process of making real art. Without the audience, there is little to no significance to the idea or the creation.

Artists engage and collaborate with audiences in many different ways today. By opening up their process of creation to others, they give up a measure of control over their work, and give over to chance and to trust in the viewer-turned-participant. And the work of art, in turn, becomes a two-way exchange.

Artists are not obligated to their audience. If a person creates something and decides that it is art, then it is art. An audience is unnecessary, and artists certainly have no obligation to an audience.

Subject, form, and content have always been the three basic components of a work of art, and they are wed in a way that is inseparable.

The elements of art are color, form, line, shape, space, and texture. The principles of art are scale, proportion, unity, variety, rhythm, mass, shape, space, balance, volume, perspective, and depth. Understanding the art methods will help define and determine how the culture created the art and for what use.

As a principle of art, contrast refers to the arrangement of opposite elements and effects. For example, light and dark colors, smooth and rough textures, large and small shapes. Contrast can be used to create variety, visual interest, and drama in an artwork.

In the visual arts, style is a “… distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories” or “… any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made”.

10 of the Most Popular Art Styles

1. Abstract Art. This bizarre art style will confuse you if you are the kind of person who seeks meaning in everything.
2. Impressionism. Impressionism was first introduced in Paris before it spread throughout the US and Europe.
3. Pop Art.
4. Cubism.
5. Modern Art.
6. Surrealism.
7. Contemporary Art.
8. Fantasy.