Psychology of the Audience in Relation to the Architecture of the Theater

In spite of the vast amount of information at our disposal concerning the theaters of the past, very little is known of the specific attitudes of their audiences. We know much about play scripts, production books, lists of players, sets, types of playhouses, and criticisms, but essentially nothing concerning the feelings of that community of spectators which is the vital source of inspiration for the myriad forms and dimensions of the theater. The drama today is somewhat removed from its early ritualistic foundations; nevertheless it is still subject to those Oedipal impulses that determine its communal nature.

The Greeks were among the first of the Western cultures to organize these totemistic and ritualistic activities into theatrical form. We find, for example, in analyzing the relationship of hero, chorus, and audience that the hero is a collective ego created to perform deeds which a community would like to perform, but which are forbidden. The chorus is similarly created to express the moral censure and restrictions which a community must impose upon the individual for these deeds. From the freudian point of view such deeds as parricide and incest are the most elemental crimes that man is capable of committing and hold a crucial position in human psychology. The Greeks were instinctively 'aware'1 of the psychological meanings of these taboos and employed them exclusively as the