ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of the Renaissance theater as an “aetherial” perspectival performance space in effecting the transformation of the substantive landscape into the landscape of spatial scenery. This transformation took place by turning things first outside in, then inside out, and finally, as in Vegas, outside in again. Landscape architecture, which produces environments experienced through practice and performance, is nevertheless closer in spirit to theater than to painting. The facade of the landscape scenery, painted on the back and the side wings of the stage, thus formed a kind of theatrical mask that helped transform the identity of the person performing into the figure they were performing, much as had the mask. When the landscape scenery of the masque is thus transposed to the world outside the theater, all the world comes to be perceived in terms of landscape scenery, hierarchized according to scale.
