” We know that barbarians have their art. Let us create another. “
(Brecht, 31)
If viewed in chronological order, the concept of the audience has been greatly developed in the arguments of the three theorists. The context and framework of the three authors are not the same：Brecht used the dilemma of reinterpretation of classic in modern theater as the foothold of his discussion. He argues that “We and our forbears have a different relationship to what is been shown .”(187)
Boal puts theatre works into the frame of social development. Taylor casts into light the performance activities from the 1960s and keeps social movements in her spectrum of research.
Brecht advocated the separation of roles and actors which sets the audience free from empathy effects and makes a transformation from the “old-affects” to Alienation possible ( 192 ).
“The audience must become the character.”
(Boal, xxi)
Boal combed the ancient theater’s Geneology and thought that the purpose of the traditional theater was to emphasize a determined social and ethos. At the same time, he thinks that Brecht’s work to break the fourth wall was not completed (xx). The invasion as symbolic trespass, audiences must be actively involved as “spec-actors”, so that the fourth wall can be broken through. (xxi)
“Performances often challenge the limits of the artists. But they also challenge those of the viewers.”
( Taylor, 72）
With the embodiment and the socialization of performance, the relationship between performance and the audience has become more complicated. Through the premise of “seeing is doing”/” viewing is an action” (82), Taylor differents the audience in these contemporary performances. The audience becomes plural in her discussion as performance is collaborative work in a social movement aspect. “The performance itself asks audiences to do something, even that something is to do nothing.” (86) She proposed that “affect” and “E-motion” as vital for the animation of the performer and audience, which opposes Brecht‘s attitude toward “old affect”.
The common characteristics of the three theorists are to recognize the epistemology value of performance/theatre, to reveal the power of art as political intervention. By putting the hierarchy essence of“catharsis” and “empathy” into question, the relationship between the performance and the audience is re-examined, the possibility of the citizen as the audience evoluted.