The stark, impersonal lighting strongly complimented the theme of insanity that dominated the performance by distancing the audience in such a way that meant they could not engage fully in the action taking place. This barrier emphasized the sense of isolation that the protagonist of the scene was feeling and is an example of the effective Peircean approach to semiotics. By dividing the components of a performance into various signs - be they "icons", "indices" or "symbols" - it is possible to access all areas of performance as opposed to merely the linguistic composition.
The Saussurean emphasis placed on the linguistics of a performance is limiting, as different signs and meanings have varying connotations to separate cultures and social groups. Whilst Saussure defines the signified and signifier as "psychological"#. He focused on the linguistic sign and "phoncentrically privileged the spoken word"#. He accepted that the entire system of signs existed in a personal understanding or interpretation of sound-images and their concepts, yet felt that this was arbitrary. Never did he broach the field of sociology whilst determining the cultural inflictions that formed the arbitrary relationships between signifieds and signifiers, yet it is this that fellow semioticians highlighted when protesting that concepts were controlled by individual experience. This is why the approach of many contemporary social semioticians who place importance on the cultural, social and historical background of both the sign and the interpreter, is far more effective in understanding the connotations and ideologies of performance.
Performance, and its effectiveness, is greatly governed by the audience being performed to. For example, in the late nineteenth century Henrik Ibsen wrote "A Doll's House" for a male-dominated, class-orientated society where emphasis was given to reputation and social status.