Theatralität des Wissens als Raum und als Text

The stage of a theatre place or building offers the space for dramatic action representing the world. It is thus not astonishing that theatre provides a number of metaphors for storing knowledge, together with other forms of storing knowledge, e.g. a museum, a library, a castle, or a whole town. The most renowned example of knowledge located in a building is, besides utopian conceptions (Rabelais, Campanella, Andreae), the Escorial near Madrid, called by contemporaries a Noah‘s ark of all kinds of sciences and cultural activities. There are traces in the Escorial leading back to Giulio Camillos Idea del theatro, a main text of the 16th century discussion about mnemonic art. Camillo imagines an amphitheatre displaying on its rows the knowledge of the world in a well ordered systematic way. Thus, he converts the normal theatrical perspective: the visitor no longer sits on the terraces looking at the drama performed on the stage, but stands himself admidst the scene viewing the (not existing) auditory. Camillo takes leave thereby of the closed world of contemporary anatomical auditories (Bologna, Padova, Amsterdam etc.) where students are looking upon the central demonstration table where the professor is teaching with authority. Camillo‘s Idea del theatro does not open, however, the way to modern science, because it still depends on cabbalistic and esoteric presuppositions. In modern times an encyclopedia structuring all our knowledge is not possible any more. A modern form of encyclopedia could be in turn a permanent self-correcting dialogue.