THE STAGE THRILLER: SOCIOMETRIC INTERPRETATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE STAGE, THE PLAY, AND THE AUDIENCE.

This article discusses various issues related to the sociometric interpretation of the relationships between the stage, the play, and the audience, with specific reference to stage thrillers. Sociometry of today is the continuation of those old attempts of direct quantitative observations of the social activities of people with the intent of immediately remedying the frictions among the members of the group with the minimum of effort. If one keeps in mind that all physical analogies as atom, saturation point, solution, attraction and repulsion must, if applied to the social world, be understood with the implication that the part is not isolated, that it participates in the whole: and the whole culture, then the principle of direct sociometric approach will become more and more valuable. In taking up the problem of the stage in its relationship to the audience, the basic traditions of modern sociometry are being followed in the article. In doing so, the article author first deals with the cultural "conserves," then briefly follows the development of the play, and tries to get at the basic differences between the dramatic play and the stage thriller, and finally turns to the atoms, to characteristic attitudes of the audience, the idea being that if the impact from the stage changes the spontaneous action.