This work takes a new look at the use of space in the Western theatre tradition, but it is not merely a book on the scenic or spatial as one of several elements of theatrical practice. It is a formidable undertaking but succeeds in providing an exciting and until now largely uncharted approach. The work should be of great interest to theatre practitioners as well as to theatre scholars and those engaged in the study of ideologies of gender. This truism of spatial iconography opens the potential for an analysis of drama which diverges from the study of plot, character, or imagery into an analysis of theatrical space itself.
Theatrical space is composed, in turn, of the space within and the space without.
The space within is quite simply the 'seen space,' that which is visible to the audience, while the space without is the unseen but conceptually present space offstage. Together they refer to the total 'universe' realized in production. With these terms in hand the author turns her attention to her first analysis, that of the Agamemnon . Any reader or viewer of the Agamemnon cannot miss the brooding, fearful emphasis placed upon the closed doors of the palace which forms the backdrop for the action, and on the insidious mysteries which those doors enclose. Modern productions can evoke but perhaps never reduplicate the horror of that facade for its original audience.