How would different audiences interpret the dramatic conventions that are written below for Act 1, scene 5 of Macbeth?The dramatic conventions are:...

Hi peace786!  Since I am the one who gave you those
conventions, I'll try to show how different audiences might react.  Let's look at
audience reaction instead of
interpretation. 
Interpretation is a more scholarly, thoughtful process that
usually happens when someone reads something.  An audience is generally
reacting to what happens in the moment during a performance, rather than
pausing to reflect and interpret.

I will also say that the
conventions are universal tools, not special effects that one might employ in this scene
or that.  Conventions are meant to be in place for an entire performance of a play.  For
example, having Lady Macbeth read her letter from Macbeth to the audience and discuss
her scheme with them, in effect, is the same convention as, in Act II, scene i, having
Macbeth actually ask the audience "Is this a dagger which I see before me...?"  So, it
makes more sense to discuss the overall effect of the convention on the audience, rather
than the effect in one scene alone.

I'll use a couple of
different examples of Modern Day audiences to give you an idea of how these conventions
could be received today.

Let's start with an audience of
school kids.  If one staged a production of Macbeth with a man
playing Lady Macbeth, they would probably find this funny.  It would be hard, I think,
for them to get over the oddness, since this sort of non-literal casting is not
something that our society is used to.  However, when school kids are given permission
to interact verbally with the performance, they generally jump right in.  In my
experience directing touring productions of Shakespeare for school performances, this is
the single most successful convention to use.  Students do far less withdrawing to talk
to their neighbor and are much more engaged in the action of the play.  One of the main
ways to let the audience know that it is OK to voice their opinion and participate in
the play is through having the actors speak directly to the audience in their
soliloquies.  So, the use of these two conventions goes hand in hand.  By and large, the
overall reaction of school audiences (even as young as grades 5 or 6) is that the play
is more fun and easier to understand with these conventions--even though the text is
100% Shakespeare.

What about a much more mature audience,
maybe one  that has been attending theatre performances for quite a few years?  Well, I
would say that there reaction is much more skeptical.  They have attended theatre, with
its twentieth century conventions for quite some time.  And while they probably would
react in a more open-minded  way(less giggling and laughter) to the man cast as Lady
Macbeth, they would be much less likely to jump into the interactive atmosphere of
characters directly addressing them and being encouraged to be vocally involved in the
play.  This is natural, however.  It isn't really that easy to give up one's
conditioning.  That said, I have seen older audiences warm up to these conventions and
allow themselves to have more fun at a Shakespeare play because of it.  They often react
with a sense that they "understood it" better as well.

The
link below gives more information on Modern Day audience reactions to Original Staging
conventions.