Of all places. .. drama and place

This chapter traces theatre’s spatial and architectural evolution and elaboration: how it ‘takes place’, and ultimately becomes a ‘place of places’. Its model commences with performance making room - through action and temporary annexation - for itself; next, delineating and organising areas for its privileged usage and eventually, formalising and fixing the spatial coupling of performers and spectators in playhouses - particular places of representation and reception, of doing, looking and listening, dedicated to manifesting other, fictional places. It examines the often limited scenic and compositional strategies, techniques and technologies developed in conjuring and replicating such locations: how theatre’s constructed scenographies, its things, have concrete and symbolic agency; and how its material realities both enhance and impact upon the expressive capacities of performers, theatre’s inhabitants. Finally, it considers recent artistic endeavours to unsettle the stage/auditorium divide and, as theatre occupies other places, the practical and aesthetic implications of such displacements.