Feedback inside and outside the theater, also known as the macro feedback of the play, mainly occurs between the creative group composed of playwrights, directors, and performance producers and the audience.

O.W. Schlegel noted:

Whether a work is suitable for staging often depends on the audience's receptivity and habits, and therefore, it depends on the general national psychology and the current degree of artistic accomplishment of the general public. Among all kinds of arts, theater is the most mundane. Although it comes from the depths of the passionate heart, it is not afraid to express itself in the noisy hustle and bustle of social life. Playwrights must be able to win public praise and applause more than any other author.

The degree of audience acceptance determines the social fate of the theatrical work. Several playwrights in ancient Greece were selected from the national theater competitions and became famous for centuries. When Kunqu opera flourished in the Ming Dynasty of China, there was also a Suzhou Tiger Hill Opera Festival, where thousands of audiences selected singers in front of thousands of people every year. The audience's evaluation is not necessarily fair, and later the Qing Dynasty dramatist Li Yu once wrote about this, "The song is a thousand stones, but it is appropriate for those who know to listen; If you are a stranger, turn your ears in the nail", pointing out the possible gap between the level of singing and the level of the audience. However, the fate of a work is, after all, mainly based on the acceptance of the wide audience.

Li yu

Chekhov's play "The Seagull" went from failure to success, of course, related to the improvement of the director and the level of acting, however, the factor of the audience is more important. The bureaucrats and businessmen of Petersburg simply did not understand this deep play, they threw to the stage in the audience a message that they did not understand and did not appreciate, and as a result, even the sophisticated actors played it badly. The message of the failure was passed on to the playwright Chekhov, who became so discouraged that he became depressed. On the other hand, the audience of the Moscow Art Theater could understand Chekhov's thoughts and questions, and their heartfelt admiration contributed to the success of the performance, and this message reached Chekhov, and he developed another depression: regret that he did not go to Moscow for the first performance because of concern.

This is often cited as an example to praise Stanislavsky's rejuvenation. But in reality, Stanislavsky could not have expected the effect of the show at all. During the performance, he could not speculate on what the audience would say. He once recalled: "I remember sitting in the dark in fear, and as Charechinaya was saying that monologue, my back was turned to the audience, and I unconsciously stilted one leg because it was shaking nervously. "It looks like we've failed. The curtain closed in a deathly silence. As we all know, thunderous applause rang out at this time. The audience's welcome was a reward for Chekhov and Stanislavsky, but in fact the audience had a right not to give such compensation, even if it was unfair. It is precisely for this reason that playwrights and directors with a wealth of artistic experience are worried.

The needs of the audience have never been solidified, their aesthetic tastes are constantly changing, and artists must understand the new needs of the audience's aesthetic psychology in the current time and space. As Popov once used a metaphor, they listened to the possible reaction of the audience, just as the legendary ancient warriors leaned down to listen to the sounds coming from the earth, with their ears pressed against the earth's chest, so attentive and reverent.

Audiences often give unfair negative feedback to the creative community, which is caused by the "public expectation horizon" that we have mentioned many times. In this case, the artist should re-establish a positive feedback relationship with the audience, rather than taking a flattering attitude at the behest of the audience's negative feedback. Blindly flattering will cause the entire feedback relationship to decline until it sinks. The Irish poet Yeats once asserted: "The modern theatre has withered to the present state because the playwright thinks only of the audience and forgets the subject matter." When he said "only think of the audience", he meant that some playwrights blindly sought theatrical gimmicks that were "tried and tried", but in fact only catered to the mediocre tastes of the general audience. The Spanish dramatist Lorga believed that the dramatist should draw the audience out of the mediocrity. He writes passionately:

The stage was filled with charming water demons with greenhouse roses on their heads, and the audience was satisfied, applauding the pompous dialogue. But the dramatic poet who does not want to be oblivion should never forget the vast fields of blooming wildflowers; The fields wet with the dew of dawn, where the peasants toiled, should not be forgotten; Nor should one forget the pigeon, wounded by the mysterious hunter, which lies in agony in the grass and whose wails no one hears.

The French writer Victor Hugo put this point even more thoroughly, even arguing that the audience willingly gathered in the crowded theater in order for the artist to knead herself, like a housewife kneading a soft dough: "Molière's powerful thumb will soon be imprinted on it, and Cornaise's paw will grasp the unformed mass." ”

Wouldn't it be pleasant for the audience to be kneaded? Lorga's answer was yes. He likened the audience to the students in a school: these students have a lot of respect for the fair and demanding teachers, but they look down on the timid teachers who only know how to please the students, and even play tricks on them.

The feedback relationship between the audience and the playwright, mediated by the actors. Now let's look at the relationship between the playwright and the actor.

Thornton Wilder points out: "Character development in a play is like a blank cheque which the playwright gives to the actor to fill out – but this cheque is not entirely blank, for a series of instructions about personality are written there, but it is much less certain and absolute than in fiction." The relationship between the actor's "filling" and the "blank check" that is not blank is almost the basic knowledge of all acting and directing. Taylov, the founder of the Carmel Theater, succinctly used the propositions of "big truth" and "little truth" to illustrate this relationship. He believed that the truth recorded by the playwright was a "small truth", a limited fact that he saw alone. And our whole life is the "Big Truth". Directors and actors must be familiar with and understand the "big truth" of life. The troupe has the right and obligation to "adjust, improve, deepen and strengthen the 'little truth' in the script". Therefore, directors and actors must not be slaves to the script, but must be the masters of the script, and actively embody the idea of the script.

The American playwright O'Neill fully evaluates the reinvention of the actor when he performs his own play. He was convinced that as long as playwrights could provide actors with the opportunity to display their talents, most of them would perform very well. Many playwrights often complain that actors have played their scripts badly, but in O'Neill's view, actors often don't play well because the playwright has not provided them with opportunities to play in the script. O'Neill said that if a playwright wants to provide an opportunity for the audience to expand their imagination, he must first provide the actor with such an opportunity. He has a passage that expresses his awareness of the relationship between playwright and actor:

I'm especially fortunate that some of the main characters in my play have been played really well, and I'm so grateful for that. Of course, there are some performances that are terrible, so let it pass. The bad acting is mainly because the script is bad, so I can only be responsible for it. In general, when a role requires the actor and actress to exert their maximum agency, they will always bring brilliant creative talents and skills to meet this demand. I want to be clear: this is especially the case when the script requires the actors to go beyond the routines they are accustomed to performing. They are always looking forward to the opportunity to showcase their talents.

It not only provides enough basis for the performance, but also provides enough leeway for the performance, so the actual situation of the performance should not be forgotten when writing the play. Li Yu, who has deep stage experience, said this very vividly, he said:

Liweng holds the pen in his hand, but the mouth appears, all to the body of the pear orchard, and the soul is around, test its eyes, try its sound, good then straight book, otherwise put the pen, so it is appropriate to watch and listen.

The actors and directors still have the right to revise and adjust the script so written. Playwrights should not be offended at all, as this is a sign of their own creative input to the feedback process. The director and actors make changes to the script in the name of "performance needs", in fact, in order to incorporate the script into the immediate feedback in the theater. In doing so, to a large extent, it also reflects the audience's request, which is to let the script be washed by the habitual reaction information accumulated on the actors and directors before directly bearing the impact of the audience's reaction information. This is an essential part of the macro feedback loop of the whole drama.

Generally speaking, the play comes out of the playwright's mind, first occupying the psychology of the director and the actors, and then merging with the artistic creation of the actors to occupy the psychology of the audience. The more successful the play, the more dominant it is, and the farther away it is from the playwright personally. The French playwright Jean Giraud lamented the "alienation" of the script with a little sadness:

From the first performance, it belonged to the actors. The author hovering around the flanks of the stage is like a ghost, and if he is eavesdropping on his lines, or behaves inappropriately, he will be annoyed by the backstage people. After a hundred performances, if the play is a good play, it belongs entirely to the public. In fact, the only thing a playwright can call himself is his bad scripts. His successful creations, which had become completely independent, were far away from him.

The acceptance of large space is also the release of large space. The more successful the playwright, the less he can control the macro fate of his work. This is the paradox of the macro feedback process of the play as a whole.