How is the audience importance in the play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg?

As this is a metaplay, all of the characters acknowledge the audience. In the first scene, the audience is assigned a well-defined role, the role of Bri's unruly students. By the second scene, however, Bri is in his home, where the rest of the play takes place. When Bri and Sheila, and, by Act Two, their house guests, continue to speak to the audience, its role changes. After the first scene in Act One, the audience members assign meaning to the play that is Bri and Joe's married life by witnessing it. An audience that laughs, shuffles, and makes eye contact has more complex interactions with Bri and Sheila than their severely disabled daughter, Joe, ever will. The story Bri and Sheila tell, the story of their life caring for their daughter, is about Joe. Because Joe can neither understand nor respond to it though, it is for the audience. By Act Two, when all of the additional house guests tell the audience how much they think Joe's life is worth, the audience symbolizes anyone who has the opportunity to judge the actions of the parents of a child with a disability. The audience has the opportunity to be a more sympathetic, informed observer and judge than Bri and Sheila's houseguests though, because it has heard monologues wherein Bri and Sheila respectively address their own feelings about Joe.