Talking to the Audience

TALKING TO THE AUDIENCE is study of the use of §chorus-like characters in modern plays who comment §on the action, participate in the action, interact §with the main characters and, in today's theater, §are one of the main characters. This study discusses §such characters in plays by major American, and one §major British, playwright: Eugene O'Neill's Strange §Interlude, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Tennessee §Williams's The Glass Menagerie, both versions of §Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, Wendy §Wasserstein's The Heide Chronicles, Peter Shaffer's §Equus and Margaret Edson's Wit. The characters' §dilemmas are at once eternal and universal to the §human condition, yet specific to the various §protagonists and the challenges of life in the §century just ended and the one in which we now live §and strive. TALKING TO THE AUDIENCE is study of the use of §chorus-like characters in modern plays who comment §on the action, participate in the action, interact §with the main characters and, in today''s theater, §are one of the main characters. This study discusses §such characters in plays by major American, and one §major British, playwright: Eugene O''Neill''s Strange §Interlude, Thornton Wilder''s Our Town, Tennessee §Williams''s The Glass Menagerie, both versions of §Arthur Miller''s A View from the Bridge, Wendy §Wasserstein''s The Heide Chronicles, Peter Shaffer''s §Equus and Margaret Edson''s Wit. The characters'' §dilemmas are at once eternal and universal to the §human condition, yet specific to the various §protagonists and the challenges of life in the §century just ended and the one in which we now live §and strive.