Mathematical universe

Summary

Modern theater was thus formed parallel to the development of changing dramatic conventions in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries as a spatial art of depiction. The visual theatrical presentation, the actor's creation of character as an expression of the language of the body, and the line of plot were all depicted according to symmetrical or asymmetrical rules of geometry.

The abstract square image of the stage (a cube in its spatial version), inscribed with lines of central perspective, created the illusion of an infinite, unchanging, homogeneous space, and thus permitted the spectator “to take in the whole range of the stage with a single glance.” But an equal role in the creation of the stage image was played by the illusions produced by scenographic conventions and, increasingly importantly, the peopling of the stage with the motor forces embodied in human beings—the actors. This is how, in the wake of the stereoscopic visual principle, modern individualism and a hierarchical conception of human existence entered the theater.

The circle (sphere) of the actor's “speaking gestures” (with meaning inhering in each line of movement of every significant part of the body) was—regardless of the value of the Delsartian codification—an expression of the modern faith in the universality of the extra-linguistic emotional code, and also of the ubiquity of the “reading in” of intention that defined each interpersonal relation (which according to contemporary psychology justifies the application of the theatrical metaphor in social life).

This was also a new understanding of acting, not only as the art of declamation or singing, but as the artistic repletion of the space of the stage with a dynamic, three-dimensional image of the body in motion—a visual work of art constructed by the actor or dancer. And finally, the circle of gestures can be read as the taking up anew of the concept of Vitruvian man—in the Christian version disseminated in the Renaissance, when “the Vitruvian figure inscribed in a square and a circle became a symbol of the mathematical sympathy between microcosm and macrocosm.” Deserving of special treatment is the question, passed over here, of modern theater architecture, which was influenced alongside the Vitruvian tradition by Renaissance study of mnemonics and hermetism.