Jerusalem: relationships between performers and audience

Relationships Between Performers and Audience

Establishing Connection

Engagement: The actors’ delivery of monologues or soliloquies aims to forge a direct emotional connection with the audience, extending beyond the ‘fourth wall’.
Interactive Elements: Elements such as dance, songs, or direct interaction with the audience works to involve the spectators on a deeper level, enhancing their engagement in the storyline.
Character Development: Performers delineate their characters with extreme realism to elicit empathy and provoke thought, thus creating an intimate empathetic relationship with the audience.

Provoking Reaction

Challenging Narratives: Performers strive to make the audience question accepted societal norms and behaviours, provoking introspection and prompting critical thought.
Emotional Manipulation: Performers can manipulate the audience’s emotions. The portrayal of loss or victory, joy or misery, can lead to the arousal of identifiable human sentiments that resonate with the audience.
Confrontational Themes: At times, the play presents controversial or uncomfortable topics designed to provoke a visceral response, thereby compelling the viewers to ponder their own perceptions.

Effect of Setting on Audience-Actor Relationship

Immersive Staging: The mobile home set design in ‘Jerusalem’ is highly detailed and intimate, encapsulating the audience into the story’s environment, deepening viewer empathy and engagement.
Symbolic Elements: Elements such as the drumming or the English countryside backdrop provide a surreal overlay to the realistic dialogue, shaping the audience’s perception of the narrative progression.
Physical Presentation: Actors’ costume, body language, and expressions contribute to conveying the intensity and complexity of the characters, collectively influencing the audience’s interpretation of the various relationships and conflicts at play.

By understanding the dynamically shifting relationship between the performers and the audience, analysing these aspects will unlock deeper insights into the play’s underlying themes and messages.