Through Wall’s Chink’. Or, Audience Interplay in Comic Acting

Wilkie, I

Abstract

All forms of live performance require the establishment of some kind of interplay between the performer and audience. The presentation of a theatrical event requires the making of a ‘contract’ (Verma in Giannachi and Luckhurst 1999: 129) wherein performers and audience enter into a specialised form of intercommunication. Live performance, as a system of communication, requires each party to play their pre-established and ongoing role within the pretence; to suspend disbelief for the duration of the action; and to respond in particular ways to the event’s action as it unfolds. As Aston and Savona note in Theatre as Sign-System, ‘the spectator … is engaged in a project of creative collaboration with the dramatist and actor in the interest of a more complete realisation of the performance’ (1991: 160).

• Online Publication Date: Aug 27, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 8, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 29, 2016
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 5-24
• Book Title: Acting Comedy
• ISBN: 9781138891418-(paperback);-9781138891401-(hardback);-9781315709673-(ebook)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315709673
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315709673
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/Acting-Comedy/Olsen/p/book/9781138891418
• Contract Date: Jan 1, 2015