INVOLVING THE AUDIENCE

To understand modern tragicomedy, we must first understand afresh the role of an audience in the theatre. The suggestion that drama is a structure of shifting relationships between character and spectator in the course of performance asks for closer definition. It means rather more than that the interplay between the actor and his audience brings the play to life.

Every human being is an actor manqué: nor do we need the psychologists to tell us this. Besides the faculty of laughter and the faculty of thought, he has also the faculty of taking the part of others. He reproduces within his imagination situations and circumstances which are not his own in order to comprehend the life about him. From the early years he learns to enter into the thoughts and feelings of those he sees outside himself, and in this way he civilizes himself, and his mind and spirit grow. This is perhaps the supreme faculty he brings with him into the theatre.