“Reading a play”, Strindberg (2007: 133) writes in his Memorandum to the Members of the Intimate Theatre 1908,

To read a play may be difficult. To see a play is in some ways easier, in other ways more difficult in the sense that the spectator constantly is confronted with such a wealth of more or less simultaneous impressions that he or she only finds time to grasp some of them. In a stage performance the eye wanders from the speaker to the listener(s), from faces to costumes, from scenery to properties.

While the reader can turn back to the beginning of his text, read bits of it anew, look up difficult words etc., the spectator who must adjust to the dynamic audiovisual flow, has no such possibility. And while the reader experiences the drama text in isolation, the spectator experiences it as part of a collective, the theatre audience. Our experience of the world around us occurs via our five sensations. The text can communicate all these directly, a performance can normally do so only with regard to sight and hearing. The other three sensations can be communicated only indirectly, via the dialogue.