ABSTRACT
"Street" and "stage" are interchangeable ideas in the Renaissance, but perhaps never more so than in the oneiric utopia of the ideal city. "Theatre" performances happened in the street before the development of special theatrical spaces in gardens and palaces. It is especially fitting that the first such permanent theatre building was conceived for an ideal city, Sabbioneta, Italy, where the citizens were clearly actors in an urban drama staged by the ruling founder. Kurt W. Forster's seminal interpretation of the project focuses on its role in the development of theatre design as a distinctive social and spatial type and he articulates its political and rhetorical message in terms of a symbolically potent location and iconographic program. The perspective paradigm, a "visual model that defines and positions the spectator in relation to the picture" or view, governs the spatial sense of the Renaissance ideal city.
