Cities are theatres. In this third episode we think of cities as the setting or backdrop to drama and events – ideas connected to Berthold Brecht’s development of Epic Theatre in the 1920’s or of Henri Lefebvre’s focus on everyday urban life . Designers of cities have been consciously creating the elements of theatrical urban life through history. Edmond and Corrigan explicitly worked with this theatrical reading of architecture and urbanism, and understood the relationship between architecture and stage design. 

Conrad Hamann has talked about how quickly cinema took on the task of depicting cities and treated a city as a main character. We can think of Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov in 1929 and countless other films following. Conrad has talked too about the theatrical elements which have persisted in city design – the composed street; the city logo or icon; campus groupings, and triumphal arches. Each of these as venues for the Instant Theatre of life. 

21st century cities are probably seen in google earth by more people that any other place, and even seeing cities from the air for the first time transformed the scale of urban drama. Yet the little theatrical moment of the encounter on a street corner persists. What does a theatrical reading of cities mean for us today?