Architecture and performing arts always had a close relationship, but their connections are still insufficiently mapped and constitute a promising field of research for scholars and artists. 

After the Italian stage that dominated the Western theatre in the last few centuries, the performing arts of today are rediscovering the multiple stage of Renaissance. It is, however, a multiple stage already transformed by technology and society, where the stage can be a screen, a virtual world, a real place, a local community, etc.  

The spatial multiplicity opened horizons to the rediscovery of the movement by the performing arts – whether the movement of physical theater, camera movement, movement in space. From the development of site-specific theater, to the presence of screens on stage, to performative experiences in trucks, buses, cars, ships, to the streamed theatre or that is adapted to each venue, space is itself transforming the theatre, which often seeks to transform space itself.    

Six years after the Dramatic Architectures. Places of Drama – Drama for Spaces International Conference, which brought together about fifty researchers from different countries, we believe that it is time to reopen the debate, looking at how this field of studies has evolved and which are its current main concerns and more recent developments.

We welcome papers that offer new insights on the topic by exploring themes such as: the use of screens in the performing arts; the relationship between the digital world and the performing arts; the occupation and transformation of real spaces by the performing arts; the role of movement in scenographic spaces; the relation between non-theatrical spaces used for performance and theatre; interactions between scenographic mechanisms and performative arts; micro and mobile theatres, etc.

But we are also interested in creating a theoretical framework based on common ground between architecture and performing arts, such as the problems of space and the use of light as a design device, besides case studies and interpretations of architectural, dramaturgical and performative experiences.