ABSTRACT
Western performance theory, at least since Denis Diderot’s insistence in the eighteenth century on the erection of an imaginary “fourth wall” as an invisible yet impenetrable barrier separating the performers from the audience, has assumed that there is a reciprocal relationship between the closure of representational illusion and the emotional involvement of the audience (Roach 155.) Similarly, modern acting theory, whether from the proemotionalist perspective of Stanislavski or the anti-emotionalist perspective of Brecht, has axiomatically presumed that the extent of the audience’s emotional response in the theatre is dependent on the completeness of referential illusion and the de-realization of the actor. This assumption has become so ingrained in our thinking about the relationship between representational illusion and audience emotional response that even the most antirepresentational contemporary performance theory “has not questioned the dogma that representational illusion is necessary for empathetic response” (Fox 361).
