Gambaro also achieves the alienation of the audience through agency by the idea of theater etiquette, playing of off their social ideologies. At the end of the play, after the prostitutes sing, The Guide has to persuade the audience that the play is over. He proclaims, “If you don’t clap enthusiastically in all good haste/ your hands won’t go to waste! Theatre imitates life/ If you don’t clap/ It means that life is rotten to the core/ And we may as well just head for the door” (130). The Guide demands that the audience’s demand that the audience clap, demands that they clap in acceptance of everything they have seen. Through his actions of forcing the audience to comply with his proposal to applaud the play, The Guide exercises his agency over the audience through their…show more content… Actions such as these are often pre-scripted. The middle-class, in order to be seen as successful, needs good etiquette and tries to maintain that status. Failure to fulfill good etiquette in a group setting would alienate the audience, a concept which is scary to people. This production is different from normal productions where there is a stage and the audience is sitting in rows, the whole time in darkness. Being in a dark room and being shielded from judgement provides a sense of comfort in that there aren’t many expectations of the audience and their reactions and facial expressions are protected from the actors by the lighting. It is important that they are hidden from the audience as not to tell them how they really feel about the production; in reality, this would be the equivalent of speaking their mind behind closed doors without a possibility for repercussions. However, this production is different because it is like interactive theatre. The set is a house where all of the audience is seen at all times, there isn’t any protection from their
