About the work
Offending the Audience (German "Publikumsbeschimpfung") is a "speak-in" by Peter Handke, premiered in Frankfurt in 1966. The radical anti-theatre piece dispenses with plot, characters, and scenery and provocatively attacks the conventions of traditional theatre—it made the young Handke famous overnight.
Plot
Four speakers step before the audience and play no roles but address the spectators directly. In rhythmically composed, cascading sequences of words they reflect on the theatrical situation itself: they explain that there will be no plot, no illusion, no fourth wall. They analyse the behaviour, expectations, and role of the audience—before finally turning to an equally virtuosic and ironic "offending" of the spectators that definitively reverses the conventional relationship between stage and auditorium.
Cultural significance
Offending the Audience is a key work of anti- and speech-theatre and a fundamental reflection on the nature of theatre itself. Handke exposes theatrical illusion by consistently refusing it, making language and the presence of the audience the actual event. The play became a manifesto for an entire generation of experimental theatre-makers and is among the most discussed works of post-war drama.