ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on specific examples of urban theatre that have contributed to defining new forms of participation in the urban context. It explores how architectural events can contribute to define the contemporary city. The architecture constitutes a primary context for the performing arts, either through formal theatres or the ephemeral architecture of urban festivals, if it has a performing potential in and of itself, architecture must be defined as an event rather than as a built form. The chapter intends to demonstrate that this ritual unfolding is central to the definition of architecture rather than peripheral, and is easily identifiable in Mystery Plays that developed from liturgical drama within the church and gradually spilled into the city after the fourteenth century. Medieval theatre was not guided by a unified theory about staging strategies, as was the case with classical or Baroque theatre. However, it was structured around some fundamental principles.
