Au Telephone Theatre Analysis

With the stage being only 7x7m[], the closeness and claustrophobia of the performances allowed the audience to fully immerse themselves in the onstage action, this “dynamic of the theatre served to problematise the audience’s relationship with the comforts of bourgeois morality” [], allowing them to step out of the real world and into the Theatre du Grand-Guignol. In Au Telephone we are presented with a character that is given the ultimate opportunity: commit a heinous crime with no probable repercussions; the Tramp sees that the Wife, child, and housekeeper are unprotected and vulnerable, he then takes away what little power they might have against him by taking the gun from the open drawer[], his anonymity, as is reflected by his generic name, provides him the perfect escape from culpability. De Lorde set the stage for something horrific to occur, with the audience so physically close and so intimately involved he gives them a “glimpse in the eyes …show more content…
It is suggested that some people engage with these forms of violent entertainment because it “enables them to justify their own behaviour and feel less guilt about their actions”[] that is not to say the audiences that came to the Theatre du Grand Guignol were murderers and criminals, but that their smaller acts of aggression paled in comparison to the onstage action, proving a cathartic and therapeutic release for the theatre-goers. There is an internal struggle that audiences face while engaging with this theatre that keeps bringing them back to the Theatre du GG, in watching and witnessing these acts “they become fully aware of their inner most darkness”[] They themselves go through a journey of self enlightenment as they explore the depths of their own subconscious desires through watching these