Q14

[carly.applebaum]

before reading the answer choices, i was expecting something along the lines of: the audience feeling an immediate connection because the performers were telling the same story of their hardships. but i didn't really see this in any of the answer choices. i chose C because i thought it was the best answer choice that matched up with communicating with the audience.

can someone explain why E is the correct answer choice?

thanks!!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Your initial prephrase of what you were looking for in the answer choices is actually quite good.

the audience feeling an immediate connection because the performers were telling the same story of their hardships.

It sounds like you were saying that the audience believed the actos, because they were so closely connected to the stories of the farmworkers. That sounds like answer choice (E) to me. The actos were able to communicate they're message because the performers were the ones who had experienced personally the events of the acto.

Incorrect Answer

(A) suggests the closeness "immediacy" of the actors to the audience was the author's expression. But it was the closeness of the actors to the events they had experienced instead.
(B) again is about the closeness between the actors and the audience when in fact it is the closeness of the actors to events being depicted.
(C) does discuss the closeness of the actors to the events being depicted but is about the ease with which the actors were able to develop actos. It shouldn't be about the ease of the actors to develop the actos but rather the ease with which the audience can relate to the events being depicted, because of the closeness of the actors to the events being depicted.
(D) is about the closeness of the actors to the director - again the wrong sense of closeness.

[cacrv]

Hi, I'm not sure how you were able to pre-phrase the answer to relate to the audience. Is it just because the preceding sentence was regarding how the audience could react? Because the specific sentence in question is in reference to "participants" I assumed that it would involve the actors, and that's why C was appealing to me. Any further insight would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

[LukeM22]

(C) does discuss the closeness of the actors to the events being depicted but is about the ease with which the actors were able to develop actos. It shouldn't be about the ease of the actors to develop the actos but rather the ease with which the audience can relate to the events being depicted, because of the closeness of the actors to the events being depicted.

I'm still not sure why this is the case. I feel like both C and E are both equally plausible outcomes of actos being based on personal experiences. Actually, I opted for C because when I read "participant's personal experiences", I assumed the "participants" were the people actually acting out the play, given that participants usually refers to someone that is not an observer... which is what an audience (usually) is?

[ohthatpatrick]

This is a weird question since it seems to fundamentally just test the real world definition of "immediacy", without much context to help.

"Immediacy" is (almost?) always a term used in relation to the audience's perception of a work, i.e. the effect that a work has on people.

You can otherwise use the pronoun here to guide you:
Because actos were based on personal experiences, they had palpable immediacy.

The author is saying that "actos" had palpable immediacy.
i.e. you can really FEEL how directly experienced these "actos" are.

Describing a performance as "having immediacy" sounds more like (E).
(C) seems to describe the process of creating the work, not the effect of performing it.