R4 response: Thoughts on Rough theater

I all honesty, I'm not really positive about what I've drawn from this particular reading, mostly because I don't connect as well with theatre as much as I do with film. I suppose some of the information on rough/popular theatre doesn't consciously resonate with me because to me, the "trick" to Rough theatre, that is for example, to try to do a cacophonous gag when the audience is quieter, is just second nature to me in any public speaking situation. To me, it just seems like responding correctly to the energy of the audience should just make sense to do in any setting. Upon further thought, it does make sense for there to be a distinction between a dramatic type of theatre, improv theatre and rough theatre where. In the latter two, the performance is dependent solely on the script, and/or the other participants in the scene. So, if I understand Rough Theatre correctly, the performance is dependent on variables off-stage, in lieu of what is happening on stage. In traditional theatre, the performance is the same whether the audience is falling asleep or on the edge of their seats. In rough theatre, it seems that performance would shift to literally wake them up, and respond to the needs of the audience in the moment. I suppose much like how generally when people talk to each other, we often empathically mimic each other to "humanize" ourselves when listening. How this relates to film is what is challenging me. Unless its episodic content or live, there's really no efficient way to communicate with the audience and then respond to their energy. I suppose the best example we have at this time is YouTube episodic content. On YouTube, you get the content, the content creator can look at the YouTube comments and see what the response is, then make adjustments to the quality and performance of the show. I suppose an interesting experiment would be to make a show, that's literally written as the episodes come out, based on what the audience decides or figures out. That would be a very interesting way to attempt to emulate the main component from the rough theatre.