ABSTRACT
Born from religious ritual, theatre became in ancient Greece a public institution, a mass-medium for moral, religious and political ideas, a common form of entertainment, an art of poetry with an accomplished text and an elaborate performing art, involving music, dance, costumes, scenery and special effects. Theatre is a kinetic art: its essence is action and change. Establishing what constitutes the theatrical dimension of early modernity can start from the reconceptualization of the term theatre itself. Education definitely contributed to the generalized perception of men and women that they were a place where their character was on display for all to see and that the world itself was a theatre, as the widely circulated theatrum mundi metaphor testifies. Theatre is tension and conflict, and in tragedies it exposes human violence. Like the religious ritual it derives from, theatre has a reasoned relation to space, as it became obvious in theatre architecture and in Giulio Camillo's memory theatre.
