The urge to disrupt the theatrical illusion has led to a variety of dramatic means such as a provocative audience addressing, or, even more radically, the attempt to establish physical contact with the audience ... It is precisely in the moment of the breakdown in a performance, that is, when the illusion of the stage as a closed world is denied, that the audience participation can take place and the spectator moves into the center of theatrical attention. In postmodern drama, forms of meaning are created by the gaze of the spectator ... the spectator becomes the "master of semiosis."

Postmodern drama remains a theater of theory ... with vital interest in the transformative processes of perception, that is, on how drama and theater are created and presented on stage.

Postmodern dramatists approach performance art as a valuable resource for their dramatic endeavors. Among others, the influence takes shape most vividly in the attempt to make the theatrical audience reconsider the traditional boundaries between performance and reality, art and life, fiction and autobiography.