In the “post-truth” era, the question of how people perceive things to be real, even when they are not based in fact, preoccupies us. Lessons learned in the theatre – about how emotion and affect produce an experience of realness – are more relevant than ever.

Real-ish draws on extensive interviews with audience members about their perceptions of realness in documentary, participatory, historical, and immersive performances. In studying these forms that make up the theatre of the real, Kelsey Jacobson considers how theatrical experiences of realness not only exist as a product of their real-world source material but can also unfurl as real products in their own right. Using the concept of real-ish-ness – which captures the complex feeling that is generated by engaging with elements of reality – the book examines how audiences experience the apparently real within the time and space of a performance, and how it is closely tied to the immediacy and intimacy experienced in relation to others.

When feeling – rather than fact –becomes a way of knowing truths about the world, understanding the cultivation and circulation of such feelings of realness is paramount. In exploring this process, Real-ish centres audience voices and, perhaps most importantly, audience feelings during performance.

Kelsey Jacobson is assistant professor at Queen’s University and co-founding director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research.

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“In this excellent book, Kelsey Jacobson presents a significant contribution to the fields of both audience research and performance studies. Its key originality is the focus throughout on how a sense of real-ish-ness is constructed by audiences – this is both new and deeply urgent. Reading this book helped me to understand our 'post-truth' era in a deeper, more critically nuanced way.” Kirsty Sedgman, University of Bristol and author of The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience

“Jacobson’s book serves to highlight how an audience’s experiencing of felt authenticity – even through paradoxically unstable, subjective and unresolved forms – leads to an understanding of realness as an embodied feeling over definable fact.” Participation: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies

" Jacobson uses responses to Rising Tide Theatre’s Trinity Pageant to highlight the profound connection between perceptual experiences and immediate associations formed during live performance, concluding that the pageant cleverly conflates a temporal present with a temporal past to preserve a Newfoundland that feels real. Structured into a preface, six chapters, and a coda, Real-ish is a valuable addition to the literature. A review of the bibliography and notes attests to Jacobson’s devotion in situating this work within an existing conversation. Highly recommended." Choice