How have theatre artists changed conventional audience-performer relationships to move spectators to ...

In the twentieth century, German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht, wanted to increase the audience's aesthetic distance to prevent their emotional absorption in the play, and allow them to see political issue more clearly. He believed that by achieving verfremdungseffekt, or alienation effect, the audience would become objective observers, and would be able to decide the best course of action to resolve social ills. Brazilian theatre theorist Augusto Boal extended Brecht's ideas, devising a number of techniques for turning passive spectators into spect-actors. Rather than just thinking about solutions to social problems, Boal asked audience members to try them out on stage, as a kind of rehearsal for revolution. In the 1960s, theatre groups in the US, such as the Living Theatre, provoked and confronted audiences in an attempt to make them aware of the restraints political and social institutions imposed on personal freedom.