Theater came into being in Greece in the 5th century BCE. Tragedies and comedies of Antiquity still remain to this day in the repertoire of many stages and call for artists to deliver contemporary interpretations. The texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides form the basis of this work. But why are they so popular? Perhaps because their material is so timeless. Their goal is a purification (catharsis) of the states of feeling which leads to insight—such as Aristotle writes in his Poetics.

The Theater of the Middle Ages was strongly influenced by religious themes. As early as the 9th century Easter and Passion plays were performed by clerics and occassionally by laypeople in market squares of villages and cities. Other themes stem from medieval legends, for example, the story of the crestfallen King Lear or the Knight of the Holy Grail, Parsifal.

In the Renaissance, knowledge and research took central stage. With the discovery of new lands, especially the Americas in 1492, the era of Humanism began. The life of these new times was strongly influenced by trade. First, maritime republics such as Venice and Genua followed by kingdoms including Spain, England and France fought one another for control of the seas.

During the Baroque period theater played a very prominent role. Based on the pioneering models of the Renaissance new theater buildings arose with sophisticated stage machinery which was often considered a wonder of engineering. Authors, composers, and stage designers from all countries were invited to stage magical spectacles through a combination of text, music and imagery. These stagings, however, did not just serve for amusement alone, but also as an homage to the powerful, who saw their power reflected through these productions.

Industrialization, revolution and progress on one side, the emphasizing of feeling and a return to chivalric virtures of the Middle Ages on the other: these are the motivating forces for art and drama in the 19th century. Many of these trends are mirrored in the themes of theater pieces. Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy, two prominent, popular poets from Austria were critics of the political and social conditions of the time. One embedded such issues in legends and fairy tale worlds the other in marvelous acrobatics of speech.

At the turn of the 20^th century, a search for alternative forms and an experimentation with the concept of stage began. The step from a theater of illusion to a form of theater open for interpretation, from the picture stage to the spatial stage was completed. Stage and drama of the present are designed in a multi-layered way: in addition to the traditional peephole stage with its built, illusionistic decorations, constructivist spatial contexts and fantastic spaces lead to abstraction and associative stages.