The Reception of Drama: Viewing Processes, Theatrical Space, and the Concept of Distance

Abstract

The double existential status of drama (literary text and theater performance) requires various types of recipients. There are three different types of drama recipient: the readers of the dramatic text, the director and actors (or the entire theater crew), and the audience watching the performance. The audience as an element of theater communication has become the subject of interest of various disciplines in the multimedia civilization. Among the first of these disciplines was film studies. Due to certain receptive similarities, this provided a great deal of impetus for theater studies. This article analyzes how the issue of watching and the place and role of the audience in the performance has changed through history. The main factors in this were the electrification of theaters, the appearance of professional directors at the end of the 19^th century, and the efforts of theater reformers at the beginning of the 20^th century. These reformers wanted to rouse the audience out of their numbness and indifference, and so they sought various alternative spatial arrangements to shatter the optical box of the Italian stage and break the traditional view of the audience. On the other hand, they wanted to demolish the basic theater convention most frequently referred to as distance. According to Erika Fischer Lichte, postmodern theater differs somewhat from its avant-garde predecessors, whose goal was to bring art close to life, shock the audience, make them fall into a trance and daze, and transform them into new beings. Postmodern theater does not share these same goals, but offers the freedom of randomly ascribing meaning back to the audience. By using the concrete example of Matjaž Pograjc’s direction of Fragile! by Tena Štivičić, this article demonstrates how modern direction combines theater with new media and thus poses questions for the audience about the way they watch, and at the same time plays with the concept of distance because it alternately uses the principles of inclusion and separation. As a result, such performances demand a view of the audience that is active, creative, and free – but, because of this, uncertain in its basic operation as well.