Inside Culture with Mary Beard: Audiences and Spectacle

Much of lockdown has been spent lamenting the loss of attending live performance across sport, music and theatre. Mary finds out why audiences matter and asks what role they play. She asks sports stars whether the loss of a crowd affects their performance, discusses the changing role of the spectator across history with Kwame Kwei-Armah, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Kirsty Sedgman, and attends her first Twitter listening party - a new way for musicians to reach their audience. She also talks to Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, who came up with the idea, and the Rev Richard Coles, former keyboard player with 1980s band the Communards