The Audience: Its Role and Imagination

What is the difference between films and theatre

performer-audience relationship

Performer-audience relationship

the immediate, personal encounter whose chemistry and magic give theatre its special quality

Observed theatre

the audience participates vicariously or empathetically with what is happening onstage.

Empathy

the experience of mentally or emotionally entering into the feelings or spirt of another person (character onstage)

Aesthetic distance

Physical or psychological separation or detachment of audience from dramatic action, usually considered necessary for artistic illusion.

Sociodrama

the members of participating groups explore their own attitudes and prejudices

Psychodrama

uses some of the same techniques as sociodrama but is more private and interpersonal

participatory drama

theatre is a means to another end: education, therapy, group development, or the like

observed drama

the aim is a professional performance for spectators, and this requires a separation between the performers and the audience- the "aesthetic distance"

Anachronism

involves placing some character or event outside its proper time sequence

Anachronism example

having people from the past speak and at as if they were living today

symbol

a sign, a token, or emblem that signifies something else.

Soliloquy

Speech in which a character who is alone onstage speaks inner thoughts aloud

Pantomime

performers pretend to be using objects that are not actually present such as drinking a cup

Theatre of fact

involved reenactments of material gathered from actual events

Realistic

elements of theatre that conform to our own observations of people, places, and events

Realistic theatre

follows the predictable logic of everyday life: the law of gravity, the time it tales a person to travel from one place to another, the way a room in a house looks, the way a person dresses