SOURCE: Hern, Nicholas. “Offending the Audience.” In Peter Handke: Theatre and Anti-Theatre, pp. 30-45. London: Oswald Wolff, 1971.

In the following essay, Hern disusses the theatrics involved in Offending the Audience and how this play differs from standard theatrical productions time.

The text of Offending the Audience is prefaced by a short list of seventeen ‘Rules for the Actors’ (this is the only time Handke uses the word ‘actor’ in connection with his Sprechstücke, otherwise they are speakers: the casting for this play is simply ‘Four speakers’). These rules are a series of ‘look and listen and learn’ instructions, directing the actors' attention to various more or less mundane sights and sounds, to be heard emanating from Catholic churches, football crowds, riots, debates, simultaneous translation systems, bicycle wheels, cement mixers, trains, the Rolling Stones, and the Radio Luxembourg Hit Parade, and to be seen demonstrated by layabouts, animals...