Our Country's Good: relationships between performers and audience

Our Country’s Good: relationships between performers and audience

Theatrical Experiment: Audience and Performers

  • Our Country’s Good presents theatre as a radical experiment in identity, empathy and social transformation.
  • The convicts performing the play within the play, ‘The Recruiting Officer’, become both the actors and characters, blurring the boundaries between reality and performance.
  • The officers watching the rehearsals and the final act serve as the audience, and their changing perspectives reflect the power of theatre to challenge prejudice and foster empathy.

Dynamic Stage-Audience Relationships

  • The cultivation of empathy through theatre is accentuated by the dynamic relationship between performers and audience.
  • A key factor in the changing attitudes of officers and convicts is their direct exposure to each other in the shared space of theatre.
  • This results in a communal experience that dismantles class barriers and allows for mutual understanding.

Dramatic Irony and Audience-Performer Relationship

  • The use of dramatic irony, where the audience knows more than the performers, serves to strengthen the audience’s engagement.
  • The audience is aware that the convicts are performing a play written by a fellow convict, which adds another layer to their understanding and enjoyment.
  • This effective use of dramatic irony also demonstrates the manipulative power of theatre, sparking curiosity and empathy among the audience.

Individual Character-Audience Relationships

  • The individual relationships between characters and the audience add depth and complexity to the overall narrative.
  • Characters such as Ralph Clark and the convict Liz Morden undergo significant transformations in the eyes of the audience, mirroring changes in their own self-perception.
  • By observing the development of these relationships, the audience experiences the transformative power of theatre firsthand.

Final Performance and Audience Reaction

  • The final performance of ‘The Recruiting Officer’ presents a climactic convergence of performers and audience.
  • The audience’s emotional investment in the success of the play indicates the profound effect theatre has had on their views.
  • The play ends on a hopeful note, with the characters and audience united in their shared experience of the redemptive power of theatre.