ABSTRACT
A theatre that makes productivity its main source of entertainment must also make productivity its theme, and with a particular keenness today when people everywhere are being prevented by other people from producing themselves, in other words from securing their own sustenance, from being entertained and from entertaining themselves. The theatre must engage with reality if it is to be able to produce effective representations of reality, and is to be allowed to do so. The classical and medieval theatre estranged its characters by making them wear human or animal masks, the Asiatic theatre even today uses musical and pantomimic V-effects. These V-effects certainly prevented empathy, yet this technique owed more, not less, to hypnotic suggestion than the technique by which empathy is achieved. The ‘plot’ is the theatre’s great undertaking, the complete composition of all the gestic incidents, containing the communications and motivations that from now on must constitute the audience’s enjoyment.
