A paper presented at All Association Luncheon of annual convention of American Educational Theatre Association (34th, Washington, D. C., August 24, 1970). (Editor/RD)

This book is an attempt to begin filling the need for an aesthetic for Readers Theatre by abstracting from such sources as the history of theatre practice, the history of literary structure, the psychology of visual perception, and the history of aesthetics, some principles of audience-text-performer relationships. The book is written primarily…

Just as all perceptions are of figures differentiated from a larger background, a play takes place against the background of the audience's knowledge and feelings. While audience members generally bring to a performance a large body of background information--they evaluate the storyline, for example, using a lifetime of personal experience--at…

Described are the results of two separate surveys of cross-sections of the Philadelphia public concerning their cultural behavior, attitudes, and perceptions. The more recent survey was conducted in 1984 with a random telephone sample of 404 Philadelphia residents. The other survey consisted of a subset of approximately 400 Philadelphia area…