ABSTRACT
Theatre masters and theorists of the distant or less distant past have always concerned themselves with spectators. Their preoccupations have been multiple: it might have been to dictate a measure for playwriting or a measure for acting, or it might have been to justify their condemnation of theatre or to defend their reformation of it. While the twentieth century has been particularly fertile in its attempts to theoretically redefine and practically reconfigure the relationship between theatre and audience, the audience has persistently been the point of reference against which theatre has defined itself (Freshwater, 2009). Brecht is exemplary in founding his criticism of conventional theatre and his reform in the direction of the epic theatre on his preoccupation with the effects of theatre on spectators.
