Offending the Audience is a play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 by Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

 writer Peter Handke

Peter Handke

Peter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...

. It is sometimes called an "anti-play" because of its renouncements of theatricality. It was originally published in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 under the title Publikumsbeschimpfung in 1966. It premiered in June 1966 at the Theatre am Turm in Frankfurt, Germany as part of the "Experimental Theatre Week." The play was first produced in London in 1970 at the Almost Free Theatre in Soho by the Interaction Arts Cooperative's TOC (The Other Company) directed by the Israeli writer and theatre director, Naftali Yavin, the cast included Andrew Norton, Judy Monahan and Jan Chappell

Jan Chappell

Jan Chappell, is a British actress, known for her portrayal of Cally in the first three series of Blake's 7. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where she received an honours diploma and the Kendal and Jenny Laird Prize....

.

Contextual Information

In a 1970 interview Handke said that the idea behind his plays was "making people aware of the world of the theatre--not of the outside world." He goes on to say that specifically in the case of Offending the Audience, his "point was to use words to encircle the audience so they'd want to free themselves by heckling; they might feel naked and get involved." He further goes on to explain his intentions:

The idea was to have the spectators in the orchestra thrown back upon themselves. What mattered to me was making them feel like going to the theatre more, making them see all plays more consciously and with a different consciousness. My theatrical plan is to have the audience always look upon my play as a means of testing other plays. I first intended to write an essay, a pamphlet, against the theatre, but then I realized that a paperback isn't an effective way to publish an anti-theatre statement. And so the outcome was, paradoxically, doing something onstage against the stage, using the theatre to protest against the theatre of the moment--I don't mean theatre as such, the Absolute, I mean theatre as a historical phenomenon, as it is to this day.

Plot synopsis

In Offending the Audience there is no plot. No story is being told at all. Instead, the audience is made aware that what they see is not a representation of anything else, but is in fact quite literal. The actors continuously repeat the point that this is not a play, and that nothing theatrical will happen.


The first lines of the performance are "You are welcome. This piece is a prologue." A prologue, that is, to all future theatrical performances.

Plot Analysis

Handke used this rejection of traditional play structure to reinforce his anti-theatre intention. His point was to get the audience to consider what exactly theatre does, in particular, the role of language in the theatre.

Character Guide

The only cast the play calls for are 'Four Speakers'. However, this has been performed with a cast of upwards of twenty actors. Rather than placing the focus on themselves, the actors instead turn the audience into the main point of interest by making them aware of how they are breathing, sitting, thinking, etc. They draw attention to what they are wearing and how they have gone through the motions of "going to the theatre."

Character Analysis

Four Speakers, a mixed group of men and women. The four characters in this play do not assumes a “role” in any traditional sense. The speakers remain merely anonymous actors who address the audience in the author’s words. They are also largely indistinguishable from one another and even from the members of the audience. Their clothing is ordinary casual dress. It is expected that the men, in both the audience and on stage, will be wearing dark jackets and white shirts with plain ties. Women are expected to be dressed in subdued colors. During their time onstage, the four speakers address the audience directly without singling out any specific individuals. They speak in a bland litany, free of emotion, vocal inflection, or any significant gestures. Nor are any specific lines assigned to the individual speakers. The characters merely pick up and leave off the discourse in a random order, speaking for varying lengths of time. Frequently, and without explanation, they contradict themselves and one another. In doing so, however, they give no indication of their own feelings about what they are saying beyond a general statement to the audience that their opinions may (or may not) be the same as those of the author. At the end of the performance, the four speakers react to the audience in exactly the same manner regardless of whether the audience’s response to their work has been favorable or unfavorable.

Since there are no actual characters, the actors' job is merely to recite the lines to the audience. The more objective they are, the closer they are to Handke's intention of isolating the actors from the audience in order to emphasize the language. Handke listed some "Rules for the actors" at the beginning of the script including such things as watching "the behaviour of tramps and idlers as they amble on the street and play the machines in the penny arcades."

Genre

It is difficult to classify such a non-play play into a specific genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

. In some ways Offending the Audience could be considered a dark comedy since it utilizes irony

Irony

Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...

 so heavily. However, Handke's intention was for it to be unclassifiable as anti-genre and anti-form.

Style

Offending the Audience falls under the style of epic theater

Epic theater

Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...

 as established by dramatist Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

. A major characteristic of epic theater is alienation, which is used to prevent the audience from becoming emotionally involved and distracted from the underlying issue of the play. In this particular case, the fact that the actors are not pretending to be other characters and are instead speaking straightforwardly to the audience is an alienation effect. Some other aspects of epic theater are minimal staging, anti-illusionment, and telling what is to come—all of which are seen in Offending the Audience.


Offending the Audience also falls heavily under the style of postmodernism

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

 since it is so unconventional in the fact that it lacks plot and characters.

Language

Handke wished to challenge the relationship of language and reality and to make the audience "intensely, unbearably conscious of the fundamentally arbitrary connections between words and things, until the linguistic mucilage that holds the world and our minds together crumbles." The most prominent way of how Handke challenged the meaning of language is found at the very end of the play. The actors first begin to compliment the audience on how perfect they were and then proceed to call them various insults. The names the actors call the audience seem to become more and more random. The point here is to create acoustic

Acoustics

Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...

 patterns in the words so that they eventually become meaningless.

Theme/Idea

As is evident from the name, the whole show leads up to the point at the end where the audience gets "offended." The significance of the insults at the end is questioned—what exactly makes these words (any words for that matter) more than just noise, but items which hold meaning.

Handke wanted to take the ideas of language and theatre—two subjects which were often accepted as they were without question—and point out why they didn't get questioned or challenged very often.

Spectacle

In theme with the whole anti-theatre idea, Offending the Audience has very minimalistic production values. The stage is usually bare, but there could be a false set in order to deceive the audience into thinking that it will be a conventional play.

Music

Handke was influenced and inspired by the music of the time. One the his "Rules for the actors" is to listen to "Tell Me

Tell Me (You're Coming Back)

"Tell Me" is a song by English rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, featured on their 1964 self-titled album . It was later released as single A-side in the USA only, becoming the first Jagger/Richards song that the band released as a single A-side, and their first record to enter the US Top 40...

" by the Rolling Stones. He was especially influenced by the Beatles. Two more of his rules are to see the Beatles' movies and "watch Ringo

Ringo Starr

Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

's smile" in "A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (film)

A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...

."

Sample Production History

Offending the Audience has been performed all over Europe since its German premiere in 1966, and after its translation to English in 1970, in the United States as well. Its most recent revival was in 2008 at The Flea Theater

The Flea Theater

The Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theatre in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theatre, and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small stage. It is the home of "The Bat Theater Company", an Obie Award winning resident acting troupe of...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.