ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the audience, in turn, processes/modifies the counterfactual as an if-ought counterfactual. There are two factors at play. First, the audience receives two – in a sense – different counterfactual expressions: one, the counterfactual conditional situation set up by the playwright, and, two, the one-past "might" counterfactual presented by the actors. And, second, the actor(s) and audience are both bound to one another for their existence, both of which are bound to the realities of our world. Spectators become an audience only during theatre, but – to complicate matters – theatre without an audience is no longer theatre: that is, theatre is bound to its audience for its existence, too. The conditional existence created by the co-presence of actor(s) and an audience doubles as an ontological description of the play as experienced by the audience. The actor's very existence is for the audience; the audience uses the actor for its own entertainment and/or (self) knowledge.
