Introduction

This introduction chapter describes the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book establishes spatial performativity through the event as a distinctly modernist phenomenon that brought the built environment more in line with the dynamics of performance through the constitutive elements of time, movement and action. It takes the 1872 inauguration of Richard Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth as a decisive moment in which a new architectural form is established along with the public necessary for its success and endurance. The book formulates abstract space provoked by Bertolt Brecht's "Street Scene" and the incursion of the industrial metropolis into the theatre. It focuses on a more recent historical event of the 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege when, through the invasion of Chechen rebels during a performance, terror literally took the stage, exposing the inherent violence of the auditorium – a legacy of Wagner's Festspielhaus.