Jeffrey C. Goldfarb suggests public-spirited dialogue need not happen after a traditional theater show, as it is most successful when it happens during a show. He believes that the live component of the theater distinguishes it from other media objects, and allows meaning to arise from the interaction between performers and audience as the performance is happening. Whereas television or film, for instance, has no room for active dialogue, theater does because the performers and audience are present in the space together. The theatrical text becomes the medium, and the performers speak through the way in which they perform the text, while the audience does so through a number of culturally sanctioned actions: applause, laughter (both laughing with and laughing at), sighing, gasping, cheering, and booing. Goldfarb recounts a particular occurrence surrounding a production of Dziady (Forefather’s Eve) in Poland in 1968. The show had been ordered to close and, on its last night, the theater was overcrowded with supporters. They were an enthusiastic, vocal audience who entered into“dialogue” with the actors and read into the play’s anti-czarist language a critique of Soviet government. When the performance ended, the crowd went into the streets to protest. The play’s content became political through dialogue and, in a way, the theater building held a public sphere where an anti-Soviet audience gathered to affirm their political sentiment before taking it to the street in open, public protest.

What Goldfarb does not write about is how uncommon such an event is, especially for today’s American theatergoers. Augusto Boal was probably closer to the reality of current Western theater when he complained about how still everyone is expected to keep during any performance, constantly policed by other audience members. The high prices on professional theater tickets and an elitist value on cultural tradition (versus popular, technology-based mass media) combine to produce an aristocratic culture surrounding theater. In this manner, a “high class” code of etiquette is imposed upon the performance space, dictating that audience members are to remain quiet: the actors speak, the audience listens. As Boal criticizes in Legislative Theatre, traditional form sets up a relationship where “everything travels from stage to auditorium, everything is transported, transferred in that direction—emotions, ideas, morality!—and nothing goes the other way.” He argues that this relationship encourages passivity and thus cancels theater’s political potential.

The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) Lay out a viewpoint and present a perceived omission
(B) Articulate an original thesis
(C) Deride an established tradition
(D) Contrast two opposing ideas
(E) Reconcile two opposing ideas





The author implies which of the following about American theater?

❑ In some social settings, passivity is considered a virtue.
❑ Augusto Boal would approve of the events of the closing performance of Dziady.
❑ Physical presence has a bearing on the creation of active dialogue.





Which of the following must be true according to the passage?

❑ By contemporary American social mores, the Polish audience described would be exhibiting other than “high class” behavior.
❑ Dziady criticized the Soviet regime.
❑ Theater is more educational than film.