During this century Theatre has been challenged by silent movies, radio, talking pictures, and television. It has survived these challenges partly because of the special nature of the actor-audience relationship. The actor-audience relationship is 'Li...
During this century Theatre has been challenged by silent movies, radio, talking pictures, and television. It has survived these challenges partly because of the special nature of the actor-audience relationship. The actor-audience relationship is 'Live' relationship. Theatre - like other performing arts - is group experience. Also, the makeup of the audience has a direct bearing on the effect of the experience.
The role of an audience at the performance of a stage play is imaginative as that of the theatre artists. The imagination of the audience is captured when theatergoers make psychological connections with the actors and their portrayals.
Aesthetic distance refers to the psychological proximity of the audience to the play. The aesthetic distance between actors and audience is shorter in the theatre than it is in either film or television. Aesthetic distance separates response to art from a response to reality. there is no viewable canon of great theatrical works of the pst. Theatre is entirely an art of present-ephemeral and impermanent- a source of renewal and challenge for the theatrical imagination.
For most of theatre history, very active audiences have played vociferous and demonstrative roles in almost all aspects of the performance, leading to disruption and occasionally riots. New roles are being sought for audiences in experiments involving more active participation, relocating and moving spectators throughout performance, opportunities for informal pre-show interchanges with actors, and formal post-show discussions.