Lifedeath: The Liminality of Role Enactment in the Theatrum Mundi

Abstract

For millennia, since Homer to postmodern theatre, the world has been imagined as a stage and life as a play. The truth of this metaphor, however, rests on mere assertions. This essay assesses the validity of this metaphor by examining drama as enactment. To this end, in dialogue with Derrida, this study elaborates on Schechner’s view of the liminality of acting and von Balthasar’s conception of death as ‘the center of acting area.’ It argues that the spectrality of existence constitutes the liminality of life as an enactment as much as it defines the world as a stage. This essay begins with a broad survey of the idea of theatrum mundi across cultures to demonstrate the significance of role enactment. It then traces how Schechner, drawing on Van Gennep and Turner, develops the notion of liminality to articulate the ambiguity of enactment as an indispensable part of acting. Finally, it engages with the interplay of life and death—or lavielamort in Derrida’s terms—as observed in von Balthasar’s dramatic framework, and maintains that the spectrality of existence accounts for the liminality of role enactment in the world as a cosmic theatre.

1. Introduction: The Truth of a Metaphor

Theatrum mundi is a metaphor with deep historical roots. It expresses that the world is a stage (topos) for life as a play. As I will show in the next section, this dramaturgical view of life has circulated around the globe and across epochs for millennia. It has not only become “a topos—a common motif—in European literature” (Kolankiewicz 2008, p. 8), or a sort of ‘absolute metaphor’ (Blumenberg [1960] 2010, p. 16), but also ‘an ageless truth,’ as Reist (2013, p. 463) puts it.

At the same time, this metaphor has become an ‘overused catch-all’ (fourre tout) term (Van Delft 2003, p. 42). While an extensive body of research elaborates on the notion and traces its historical development, the ‘truth’ of the metaphor itself has often been taken for granted. Whether it gestures towards a vision of cosmic harmony or verges on absurd farce, as we will see, the metaphor itself rests on a broad range of (a)theological appropriation and literary musings. Although many sociologists observe and recognize the resemblance between theatre and socio-cultural phenomena (Kolankiewicz 2008, pp. 12–20), their descriptions substantiate the metaphor’s analogical value without explicating the nature of the correlation.

In this context, Pearce and Puchner propose a phenomenological (Heideggerian) analysis of the theatrum mundi. Pearce (1980, p. 48) views the ‘stage–world relationship’ as an ontological dream structure (topos) that should only be understood with a suspension of belief as it “reveals the utter uncertainty that lies behind it.” Puchner associates the metaphor with literal ‘site-specificity’ (ground) and ‘emancipation’ from it. The ‘ground’ is “a name for that which we take for granted,” a literal site (Platz) over which we should hover (Schwebe) in ambivalence (Puchner 2014, p. 79). Both accounts resort to the topos of the metaphor and, as we saw, unearth even more layers of complexity in the matter.

The metaphorical notion of the theatre, as inscribed in the theatrum mundi as a topos “never definitively takes place,” Weber adds after Walter Benjamin (Weber 2004, p. 174). The link between theatre as a ‘localized space’ and the world as a stage is ‘inauthentically historical’ since what takes place on the stage itself is also ‘allegorical’ (ibid., p. 177). Theatricality itself is not a fixed structure; it is a ‘medium,’ an ever-evolving representation. The topos itself offers nothing beyond tautological gesture. Hence, Schulte (2009) goes as far as to call the metaphor ‘misleading.’ This prompts some questions: How then should we assess the validity of this metaphor? What constitutes the theatricality of our existence?

This essay addresses these questions based on Aristotle’s definition of drama as ‘enactive representation’ (prattein mimēsis; Poetics 1459a14–15) rather than revisiting the topos of the metaphor. Just as drama represents life and event through enactment, I maintain that the theatrum mundi is likewise defined by enactment. On this note, the ensuing section explores the significance of enactment in the conception of theatrum mundi throughout history. This survey aims to show the prevalence of enactment as a defining aspect of theatricality. As reviewed in section two, irrespective of the ongoing debates about the extramundane role in the theatrum mundi, our enactive role in the unfolding spectacle of existence remains incontestable.

Section three expands this inquiry by examining the metaphor in conversation with Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, the pioneers of performance studies.1 Their groundbreaking research observes the deep correspondence between life and drama, and analyzes it in terms of ‘liminality’—a transitional state that allows transformation to happen, whether in stage or social dramas. By placing the metaphor within this framework, I hold that the theatricality of our life is defined by the liminality of our existence. Here, I will engage closely with Derrida, who translated liminality in terms of spectrality—that our existence is a threshold (limen) where life and death embrace.2

2. Theatrum Mundi and the Primacy of Enactment

Theatrum mundi envisions the world as a stage and mundane reality as a spectacle. This metaphor has a long history, dating back centuries before the Common Era. The ‘oldest relevant source’ in the Western literature to date is found in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (Vangshardt 2024, p. 35). There we read how the Olympian gods watched and conspired over the unfolding of the mortals’ fate and, sometimes, intervened.3

As in the Homeric epics, the Poetic and Prophetic books of the Hebrew Scriptures also depict our lives and affairs as a spectacle under God’s ‘impenetrable gaze’ (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, pp. 151–52).4 God is not the sole spectator of the cosmic drama. Isaiah 66:24, as well as I Corinthians 4:9 and Hebrews 10:33 read that God’s people are made into a spectacle for the world (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, pp. 154–55).5 Therefore, the ‘world’ in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not just a stage or spectacle for the all-seeing eye of God, but also a ‘spect-acting’ subject—using Boal’s term (Boal [1974] 2008, p. xxi).

Plato also imagines the world as a play directed by gods, with humankind as their ‘plaything’ (paígnion; Laws I, 644d–645b). This depiction does not mean to obliterate human action and responsibility.6 On the contrary, it admonishes us to play our part accordingly and earn the gods’ favor (Laws VIII, 803c). The ‘leading-cord’—the sacred and gentle guidance of reason—will lead us to excellence, while the lesser others will lure us towards vice. Yet, Plato sternly warns against the perilous effects of excessive and non-edifying indulgence that theatre fosters (Laws II, 659c; III, 700d). He even further aspires for the expulsion of poets in order to restrain the gratifying frenzy of poetry (Republic X, 605b–c; cf. Phaedrus 245a, Ion 534a). Antitheatrical sentiments as such were also widely shared among Church Fathers and early Christian Emperors, who associate theater with immorality and deceit.7

Von Balthasar credits the development of the metaphor of theatrum mundi and the fuller apprehension of role to the Cynics, Bion of Borysthenes and Teles of Megara.8 Seneca and Epictetus, the Stoic, Clement of Alexandria,9 Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, and Plotinus, the Neoplatonist share the Cynics’ view that a good man is an actor who properly performs the role assigned to him by the divine.10

The imagery of the world as a stage became particularly prominent between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially in England, Italy, and France, as well as during the Spanish Golden Age. Everyman, the anonymous morality play, stages God and Death as characters who directly engage with the audience—which itself represents all of humankind (Mills 1995, pp. 129–35). Giulio Camillo’s posthumous work, L’Idea del Theatro (1550), posits theatre as a representation of ‘the order of eternal truth’ (Reist 2013, p. 466). Thomas Heywood’s An Apology for Actors (1612) further imbues the metaphor with a positive Christian value, casting God as the audience who watches over the play.

Theatrum mundi appears more than a hundred times throughout Jean Calvin’s work, including his magnum opus, Institutio Christianae Religionis.11 The metaphor was then introduced to Spain through Pierre Boaistuau’s best-selling work, Le Théâtre du Monde ([1558] 1981), and was given a distinct Christian voice in Francisco de Quevedo’s a poetic adaptation of Epictetus, Epicteto y Fociledes en Español con Consonantes (1635) and Lope de Vega’s Lo Fingido Verdadero (1621; Mroczkowska-Brand 1985, p. vii).

The fullest expression of the metaphor is found in Calderón de la Barca’s El Gran Teatro del Mundo (1634; von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 164). It is Calderón who “theologically deepens and broadens” the metaphor of theatrum mundi (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, pp. 162, 164). Although “all the constitutive elements” of Calderón’s drama are already present in the poem of Pierre Ronsard, “Pour la Fin d’une Comédie” (Ronsard [1565] 1950, pp. 472–73, 1084), as Wild (2014, p. 91) aptly notes, El Gran Teatro del Mundo represents ‘the pure form’ of the metaphor. Whereas Boaistuau and Ronsard ascribe a pejorative connotation to theatrum mundi, emphasizing the fraudulent and transient nature of the spectacle, Calderón emphasizes the sacramental nature of the stage as an invitation to worship Christ, the sacred Bread (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 168; [1978] 1992, p. 505; [1980] 1994, p. 132; cf. Vangshardt 2024, p. 123). Hofmannsthal’s plays (Das Kleine Welttheater, Das Salzburger Große Welttheater, Der Turm, and Jedermann) also illustrate how the significance of our action is found in the sacramental nature of the theatrum Dei (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, pp. 224, 272).

The theistic presupposition of theatrum mundi extends beyond Judeo-Christian and Western traditions. Javanese art of shadow play (wayang kulit) is one of the oldest arts of story-telling; its origin can be traced back to the 8th century (Budi 2021, pp. 3–6; Van Ness and Prawirohardjo 1980, p. 1). The puppet theatre itself represents our life in the world (wêwayanging ngaurip), and the puppeteer (dalang) mediates God by directing and performing the play (Mrázek 2005, p. xv; Keeler 1987, p. 198). Similar encounter between the sacred and the profane is seen also in Balinese wayang, celestial trance dances (sanghyang), masked theatre (topeng), even musical performance (gambuh), as each performance is offered to the deity, who directs the dalang and imbues the performers with spiritual power (taksu) (Rubin and Sedana 2007, pp. 37, 43, 66, 127).

The ancient practice of ‘shamanistic’ mediation is considered the ‘original theatre,’ as also observed in varying forms and degrees in Japanese noh, chinogwi-kut in Korea, Native American klukwalle, Indian Ramlila play, and Dawu dance in China, to name a few examples (Schechner [2002] 2020, pp. 139–44, 194–97; Dolby 1983, pp. 9–10). The notion of theatrum mundi finds its most famous expression in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which vividly demonstrates how “the world is a playhouse, history is a play, and human beings are actors.”12 The rich Oriental religious and mythological traditions of theatrum mundi continue to inspire modern literary figures such as William Butler Yeats (Taylor 1976, pp. ix–x, 56; Tian 2018, pp. 85–91) and Ariane Mnouchkine (Mnouchkine 1996a, p. 188; 1996b, p. 97; 1999, p. 194).

Theistic narratives, nonetheless, are not always mentioned in the use of the metaphor. While William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre bore the inscription ‘Totus mundus agit histrionem’—a rendition of John of Salisbury’s paraphrase of Petronius13—unlike the Christian humanist, Shakespeare leaves no explicit allusion to God when he writes: “All the world’s a stage//And all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It 2.7.138–139).14 Similar perspective is found in the masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (II, 12), and in Michel de Montaigne’s Les Essais (III.10). We can also find dissonant views of the theatrum mundi in Jean-Jacques Boissard’s Theatrum Vitae Humanae (1596; cf. Yates 1969, pp. 165–68).

In the secular versions of the metaphor, the divine involvement in the drama is removed from the scena vitae.15 The divine is replaced and its role assigned to something else. The substitutes can be anything, while the metaphysical premise is retained at all costs. At the outset of the 19th century, for example, von Schelling ([1800] 1978, p. 210) wrote that there would be no freedom in our action if God dictates everything. We must, therefore, elevate ourselves either as co-authors, or as the sole author, and take full responsibility for our actions.

Nietzsche’s vision of the eternal return also evokes a theatrum mundi, but one bereft of divine spectatorship (Simonin 2024, pp. 38–39). Like Nietzsche, Henrik Ibsen’s last play, When We Dead Awaken, showcases an immanentist vision where “man himself is the audience before whom he acts” (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 203). George Bernard Shaw follows Ibsen and endorses Nietzschean moral autonomy. In Man and Superman act 3, for example, John/Jack Tanner (Don Juan) contends that life is the inner law that aspires him to attain greatness apart from God as the observer of goodness. For the protagonist, heaven, if it exists, dispenses with metaphor just as it eschews both play and pretension (Shaw 1903, pp. 104–5, 113, 129–30). Theatrum mundi, once an inset drama to theatrum dei, is hereby severed from its framework.

In Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, “the ‘world theatre’ metaphor is used to stage its internal dismantling, right down to its metaphysical ground,” von Balthasar states (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 246). The Pirandellian world is abandoned by its insatiable author, who either failed or refused to make the actors live in accordance with his own script (Pirandello [1921] 1979, pp. 11, 14, 54, 65). Along this tradition, Bertolt Brecht contends at the Frankfurt premiere of Der kaukasische Kreidekreis: “The world of today can be reproduced in the theatre, too, but only if it is conceived of as alterable” (Bunge [1959] 2000, p. 136). Brecht shifts the ‘judicatory role’ from the Judge of the universe to us as moral agents, challenging ‘traditional virtue’ and placing the responsibility of transformation in our hands (Cohn 1967, p. 29).

“More than any contemporary playwrights,” Cohn resumes (Cohn 1967, p. 31), Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett “have manipulated the theatrum mundi tradition” to dramatize “the problematic nature of reality.” In Les Nègres, for instance, Genet (1958, p. 13) requests that at least one White person be present, ceremonially dressed, and placed under a spotlight. The White spectator here represents the court that should be judged and condemned by the Black actors. In Beckett’s Play, ‘audienceship’ replaces the divine observer as it is the spectator who “gives reality to the play” (Cohn 1967, p. 31). Using a spotlight, here Beckett “reproduces and enhances the gaze of the audience” (Weiss 2012, p. 49).

Peter Weiss also advances the secular idea of theatrum mundi in his Dantean play, Die Ermittlung. The play’s cantos probe moral conscience and responsibility regarding the Holocaust, implicating every spectator as a bystander to the atrocities. In Marat/Sade, he pushes this idea even further by reimagining theatrum mundi as a lunatic asylum (Cohn 1967, p. 34). This inset drama critiques Abbé de Coulmier as Asylum director for prioritizing political decorum and order at the expense of freedom, and challenges Marquis de Sade for impassively directing his fellow inmates in an anarchic play that ultimately culminates in the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. Such a critical view sharpens in Ken Russell’s film adaptation of John Whiting’s play The Devils. Here, Russell portrays theatrum mundi as a political instrument exploited by the church (under Cardinal Richelieu) to consolidate its power in France (Van Eecke 2015).

In ‘postmodern’ understanding of the metaphor, the ontological foundation of reality is not even considered as a factor to be reckoned with. Postmodern drama not only plays with dramatic structure and conventions, but also celebrates the crossing of categories beyond fact and fiction (Pavis 1992, pp. 14, 69; Landfester 2007, pp. 130–31). The Platonic notion of mimesis as ‘a copy of a copy’ is to be celebrated given the pointlessness of ‘ontological privilege’ (Kershaw 2009, p. 124). The divine author, as in Peter Handke’s Die Fahrt im Einbaum, “is now assigned to the inscrutable history” (Foteva 2017, p. 50). Instead of celestial panopticon, the actors turn into spectators and watch the play (Foteva 2017, pp. 46, 52), blurring the boundaries between representation and reality. As a play in a play, postmodern theatrum mundi hereby reflects “a simulacral and purely theatrical world” (Chalmers 1999, p. 77).

Needless to say, my brief list is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive. Its purpose has been to illustrate how enactment consistently functions as a defining element of drama throughout history. What is needed now is to move from breadth to depth, that is, by showing through close inspection how action defines drama, both on stage and in society. For this purpose, first, I turn to two radically different plays: Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan and Calderón’s El Gran Teatro del Mundo.

These playwrights work in very different cultural and theological horizons—20th-century Marxist modernity versus 17th-century Catholic Spain—yet both foreground enactment as central element to their dramaturgy. In Calderón, enactment is framed as a response to divine grace; in Brecht, it becomes the vehicle for transformation in the absence of divine intervention. Reading them side by side will show that, despite their contrasting metaphysical presuppositions, role-enactment remains the constitutive element of drama.

In many secular plays, the gods often appear distant and powerless, if not altogether absent. Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan is exceptional because it is “the only complete play where the Brechtian stage is populated by gods” (Revermann 2022, p. 359). On the other hand, the divine presence in the play only parades their incompetence and impotence, thereby, underscoring the necessity of human action.

As Kluge (2016, p. 191) remarks, the play is framed by the impossibility to survive (‘being good to oneself’) in a corrupt world while also adhering to divine commandments (‘being good to others’). The protagonist, Shen Te/Shui Ta, has to live with a double-role in order to meet both demands because the gods themselves abandoned her/him to the unjust social order. In this case, the gods appeared less as divine arbiters than as actors staging their own helplessness. Weary and unsettled by their supposed mission to uphold goodness on earth, they revealed themselves as both weak and contradictory: they declared the world a ‘terrible place,’ yet still forbade any attempt to change its wretchedness.

Brechtian theatre, as exemplified by Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, is anything but fatalistic. On the contrary, it uses alienation (die Verfremdung) to provoke critical awareness and to evoke appropriate action (das Richtige) in the midst of misery (Brecht [1957] 1964, p. 71). The protagonist (der Mensch) stands for “man of every period and every colour” (Brecht [1936] 1964, p. 97), as (s)he re-enacted the alienation while aspiring towards fearless social action. This aspiration can be seen in the 1953 epilogue of the play, which encourages the spectators to promptly transform their city since “[k]ein größeres Glück gibt es auf Erden nun, // als gut sein dürfen und Gutes tun” (White 1990, pp. 23–24). Arendt ([1950] 1962, p. 48) therefore concludes, “Brecht saw in ‘God’s death’ only the intoxicating possibility of a release from all fear on earth, and he was obviously of the opinion that anything is better than hoping for paradise or fearing hell in the midst of life.”

The constitutive nature of enactment in the world as a stage is not necessarily a naturalistic (anti-theistic) premise. Even in Calderón’s theistic theatre, it is the ‘human drama’ that offers the ‘pretext’ for the plot development. The human condition calls for proper responses to divine law and grace. This same ‘pretext’ underlies all autos-sacramentales (Souiller 1992, pp. 10, 142–43, 147, 174). These autos, for Calderón, are ‘sermons in verse and staged discourses’ that instruct people how to understand and celebrate life, faithfully. In this light, “the main character is always Humanity” (Duarte 2014, pp. 59, 71).

At the very beginning of El Gran Teatro del Mundo, the instruction of the (divine) Autor establishes the imperative to act well: “Obrar bien, que Dios es Dios” (Vangshardt 2024, p. 136). The Autor calls everyone, from the King to the Laborer, the Rich and the Poor alike, to enact their lives from cradle to grave. Both the dramatis personae and the spectators should participate in the cosmic drama because living (vivir) itself is performing (representar), and everyone will ultimately be held responsible for their actions before divine judgment (Arellano 2022, p. 194). The seriousness of living/performing, nevertheless, must also be understood as a ‘theatrical fiesta’ that corresponds to the creation of the world. The fiesta and the art of drama are two ‘human practices’ that, analogous to the ‘cosmogenesis,’ transform the frailty of human condition into an ‘applauded play’ within God’s play (Vangshardt 2024, pp. 111–12, 127). Thus, human action is indispensable even under a theistic horizon.

The primacy of enactment is also evident in social drama, which centers on liminality, as will be discussed further in the next section. ‘Liminality’ refers to a transitional state that yields personal and/or societal transformation. As Turner and Schechner observed, such transitions—whether in religious rites of passage or in popular entertainment—are invariably characterized by role enactment. For example, novices of the Nkang’a and Mukanda must undergo intricate initiation rites by performing codified symbolic rituals (Turner 1967, pp. 20–25, 51–55). In both rites, the primacy of enactment becomes evident: the novice’s transformation is enacted step by step through ritual behaviors. Social drama thus parallels aesthetic drama in that its liminal stage depends on embodied actions that move participants from one status to another. The liminal phase dramatizes social process by making enactment the very vehicle of transformation.

Similarly, participation in leisure activities entails action, or ‘liminoid rituals,’ though these are more spontaneous, playful, and exploratory in character (Schechner [2002] 2020, pp. 148, 170–71). Sporting competitions, carnivals, or parties are exemplary forms of liminoid actions. The liminality of these actions means that participants step outside everyday routines and assume certain roles to perform the rituals. While less solemn than liminal rites in archaic societies, these recreational rites employ structured activities to dramatize roles, identities, and social dynamics out of ordinary realities. Performance rehearsals also belong to the category of liminoid rituals since they (playfully) bring theatrical material into its ‘performative shape’ (Schechner 1985, p. 103). Both liminal and liminoid rituals, then, showcase the primacy of enactment, since it is only through action that drama exists.

As noted above, irrespective of theistic presuppositions, the deus ludens (or any non-human magister ludi)—be it playwright, director, or spectator—ultimately depends on the enactment of human roles in order to constitute the world as a stage. While directors and spectators help construct and may influence the performance, their contributions depend on our enactment of the play. In fact, drama earns its name because it necessitates action (dran; prattein) in the first place (Aristotle, Poetics 1448b36; cf. Schechner [2003] 2005, p. 33). Every performance is a ‘restored behavior,’ a re-enactment (embodiment or impersonation) of roles (Schechner 1985, pp. 35–37, 40–41). Hence, Brecht’s non-Aristotelian drama does not oppose this idea but rather amplifies it by denying the spectator the possibility of catharsis and confronting them with the necessity of taking fate into their own hands (Brecht [1932] 1964, pp. 58–60). The truth of the metaphor, for this reason, must be assessed from the enactment of our role in the cosmic drama.

Adjusting the focus of our epistemic inquiry from the metaphysical foundation of the topos to the enactment of our role allows us to think about theatrum mundi without entertaining a ‘globalizing’ presumption (Ben-Shaul 2008, p. 166) or assuming a geocentric cosmology (Robin 2018). In doing this, we are also freed from the impulse to argue for (or against) the theistic thesis, or to claim (or deny) a cosmic script that serves a certain grand-narrative. What we need now is to explain how our existence entails a role to play, while bracketing the comforts of both theistic presupposition and its counterpart.

The following section will elaborate on Turner’s and Schechner’s notions of liminality to address this issue. The notion of liminality comes from the world of social drama, and later defines stage acting. This term, as will be explored shortly, conveys both the ambiguity and transformative dynamics of enactment. These dynamics, as I will argue in section four, must be inferred from the ever-imminent presence of death in life. Thus, spectrality attests to the liminality of our existence as actors in the theatrum mundi.

3. The Liminality of Role Enactment

The notion of liminality, as used in this essay, originates in Arnold Van Gennep’s ethnological research on rites of passage (Van Gennep [1909] 1981, p. 14). The rites of passage describe how societies initiate and incorporate individuals into major social roles through a tripartite pattern (schèma): separation (préliminaires), transition (liminaires), and aggregation (postliminaires). The ‘liminaires’ refers to a phase where one transition from the old world to the new one. This phase, in some archaic societies, is associated with purification and calls for an ‘appropriation of sacra’ to facilitate the transformation (ibid., pp. 53, 128).

Elaborating on Van Gennep’s seminal study, Victor Turner’s lifelong fieldwork observed that rituals contain elements of drama and use them effectively to foster transformation. The tripartite pattern reflects the three phases of drama outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics—the ‘beginning’ aligns with the breach and crisis found in social drama, the ‘middle’ corresponds to redressive action, and the ‘end’ mirrors reintegration/schism (Schechner [2002] 2020, p. 38). Ritual is a form of social drama in the sense that it “provides a stage on which roles are enacted and the conflicts of the secular drama reflected in symbol, mime, and precept.” (Turner [1968] 1981, p. 275). It theatricalizes verbal, sensory, and symbolic messages, as well as assigning specific directions and roles for the dramatis personae.16

Across centuries of social drama, the idea of theatrum mundi has inspired a wide array of political tropes—from ancient Greece (Quiring 2014), through Catholic festivals from the High Renaissance to the 19th century (Schraven 2019), during the German Reformation (Newman 2014), in colonial America (Richards 1991). It also manifested in the rise of Nazism in the 19th and 20th centuries (Blackbourn 1987),17 and extended into contemporary political design through urban planning (Kaasa et al. 2016).

Turner considers the liminal phase in social drama to be the most crucial among the others since it could lead either to integration or schism (Turner 1967, pp. 94–96, 102–8; [1969] 2011, pp. 94–95, 166–68).18 As the term suggests, ‘limen’ refers to a threshold between two spaces; it is neither inside nor outside. Liminality is a state of ambiguity, ‘betwixt and between’ the old and the new. In social drama, it accommodates socio-cultural transformations, a state of “pure potentiality when everything, as it were, trembles in the balance” (Turner 1982, p. 44). Therein lie the ‘rituals of status reversal,’ through which re-integration (or, permanent schism) is forged out of crisis (Turner [1969] 2011, p. 177).

Turner’s conceptual ally, Schechner (1981, p. 88) translates liminality into a ‘double-negative’ field in stage drama, that is, where actors are neither themselves nor the role they play. By definition, in acting, performers do not stage themselves but rather the roles assigned for them. An actor who performs as himself simply does not act. On the other hand, acting also implies performers are not the characters they represent. Acting would abrogate itself if an actor were to become the character (if such a thing were even possible in the first place). In this light, liminality is a time when performers are suspended between ‘not-to-be’ and ‘to-be’ (Mesguich 2006, p. 11) and, vice versa, “performing is a paradigm of liminality” (Schechner 1981, p. 88).

Liminality is a binding double-negative, both in the ‘make belief’ of rituals (social drama) or the ‘make-believe’ of stage drama (Schechner [2003] 2005, p. 120). It establishes enactment (‘making,’ poiesis) as the ineradicable aspect of both social and stage drama. It is the reason why “performance functions in between, like a go-between; it is everywhere and nowhere” (Rayner 1994, p. 31). Focusing on the enactment of transition allows us to set aside metaphysical accounts of drama, or the lack thereof. Regardless of the competing theses concerning the magister ludi, no transformation occurs without the making of the drama. Therefore, Fischer-Lichte (2019, p. 263) characterizes ‘theatricality’ itself as a transformative process that arises from liminality (Fischer-Lichte [2004] 2008, pp. 67, 120).

Again, this does not, by any means, dismiss what Schechner ([1993] 1995, p. 27) calls the ‘quadrilogical exchange’ between performers, directors, spectators, and commentators that shape a performance. My contention is simply that such an exchange must center around performance itself. Performance is a ‘liminal event’ where transformation occurs, not only on the actors who play the role, but on the spectators who are ‘moved’ by the performance and connected with the author.

In social drama, the transformation that takes place in the liminal time and space redresses a crisis to induce either reintegration or schism (Schechner [2003] 2005, pp. 157, 189–94, 215–18). Role enactment in social drama, as exemplified above, necessitates a transitional state in which the crisis can be transformed into social cohesion (aggregation). What Turner calls ‘redressive action’ here assumes a breach of norms that initially generates the crisis. The resulting disturbance—stemming from discrepancy or deflection—must be redressed to prevent societal segregation. The potential for crisis cannot be obliterated because society itself is a ‘process of adaptation.’ Society is made up by actions that are “patterned by customs, and pattern only emerges in corrective and adjustive situations.” (Turner 1967, p. 271).

In this sense, crises and redressive actions characterize the liminality of social drama; they are not aberrations but integral components of society as a process. They reveal how society maintains and recreates itself through a suspension between order and reformation, structure and change. Liminality, therefore, requires actions that rehearse adaptability, allowing the dramatis personae to contest or affirm the existing reality. In this rehearsal, the personae are oscillating in transitory state as they are “no longer classified and not yet classified” (Turner 1967, p. 96). The personae dwell in an ‘inter-alia’ space and time throughout the process, having moved beyond the present crises, and yet not having arrived at resolution. Due to the all-pervasive nature of enactment, even if not all the world is a stage, as Goffman (1969, p. 78) remarks, “the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”

Given that enactment as the key to apprehending the theatrum mundi is defined by liminality, we must now identify what constitutes the liminality in life. In the section that ensues, I will argue that the spectrality of life warrants the liminality of existence. The ever-imminent presence of death in life establishes existence as the very threshold that makes our action (and inaction) inherently theatrical.

4. Lifedeath: The Liminality of Spectral Existence

The term ‘lifedeath’ (lavielamort) was coined and introduced by Jacques Derrida in a 1975–1976 seminar at the École Normale Supérieure. The scriptio continua appears once in the eleventh session, near the end of the series, as a ‘textual marker’ that questions the ‘decidability’ of, and the opposition between, life and death (Derrida 2019, p. 276).19 It expresses the (theoretical) undecidability between absence and presence, life and death —a (non-phenomenal) phenomenon Derrida later refers to as ‘fantômachie’ (McMullen 1983) or, more famously, as ‘spectralité’ (Derrida 1980, p. 305; 1986, p. 215; 1993, pp. 94, 235; Derrida and Stiegler 1996, pp. 61, 131).

‘Spectrality’ initially describes cinematic art as a staging of a trace of what is neither living nor dead, neither present nor absent, like a ghost (fantôme, revenant; Derrida and Stiegler 1996, pp. 30, 139; de Baecque and Jousse 2015, p. 26).20 The same can be said of the art of drama, where everything is suspended in iteration (Derrida 2006, pp. 152–54). Theatre is ‘a place of hauntings,’ where everything is a returning present (présent revenant), as Mesguich writes after Derrida (Mesguich and Viala 2011, pp. 17, 21–24, 70–71, 122–23; Mesguich and Bouret 2023, p. 196).21 As Schechner (1985, pp. 35–37, 40–41) states, performance is a ‘restored behavior,’ constituted of re-enactments of the past (stories, traditions, workshops, rehearsals) within the present process of becoming, or impersonating, certain roles. The roles are forever haunting in the perfect future (futur antérieur) as spectral revenants, awaiting re-enactments (Mesguich 2006, pp. 11, 25, 32, 75; Mesguich and Viala 2011, pp. 88, 94). Every spectacle is a ‘spectracle’ where everything returns (revient). (Mesguich and Viala 2011, p. 17; Mesguich and Spire 2004, p. 57).

The association between spectrality and the art of performance can be traced from French back to its Indo-European root. As Fayard (2007, pp. 46–47) points out, “in French, ‘performance’ (spectacle) and ‘ghost’ (spectre) have common origins.” Spectacle derives from the Latin infinitive spectare, and spectre from specere—both meaning ‘to look’ (regarder).22 In this light, spectrality draws attention to the invisibility of visibility itself (Derrida 2006, p. 143). By definition, theatre is visibility,23 as Derrida (1987, p. 527) admits; yet it stages the invisible: names, dramatis personae. Like Banquo and the Old King Hamlet, all characters are embodied apparitions. The characters haunt the stage as revenants, neither dead nor alive, and the performers their ‘ghostly’ representations (Fuchs 2010, p. 76).

Like cinematic art, theatrical representations stage spectrality as a trace that “marks the present with its absence;” it stages surviving (sur-vivance) as the very possibility of death (Derrida and Stiegler 1996, pp. 131, 148). Surviving is a spectral return (une revenance spectrale) that suspends living and dying (Derrida 1986, pp. 151, 153, 182). Juliet, destined to die by the story’s end, must first rehearse her death by drinking the cataleptic potion. Her death is a trace, a deferred presence of absence. Romeo, however, must take her theatrical act as truth in order to end his own life. In turn, Juliet must believe in the fiction of his absence in order to finally enact her own demise. And yet, once again, she is not dead. Nor is Romeo. They both linger in the liminal space of spectrality, neither alive nor dead, but suspended in lifedeaths. The spectral return is more than (plus que) the dead or the living, and ‘more forceful’ than presence or absence (Derrida 1990, pp. 964, 973). The possibility of lifedeath is the very question that constitutes ‘the performativity of performative’ itself (Derrida 2000, p. 116).

Lifedeath expresses spectrality in stage and social dramas as a reflection of liminality in the theatrum mundi. Spectrality is not a modern invention of Western dramatists or literature; rather, it reflects the haunting imminence of death that has captivated human beings since the dawn of civilization across continents. It is well known that Egyptian mummification ritual represented death as a transition from life to immortality (Stevenson 2014, pp. 371–79). In contrast, the ancient Inkas at times inaugurated a new political era by staging the symbolic killing of ancestral mummies—treating the mummies as if they were living despots whose reigns had to be ended (D’Altroy 2014, pp. 415, 419).

One of the most famous expressions of humanity’s fascination with death is the dance of death, which medieval Europeans performed in cemeteries, enacting a sense of harmony through the liminal passage between life and death (Caciola 2016, p. 250). The European danse macabre may have originated between the 13th and 15th century as images, inscriptions, or masquerading funeral pantomime (Eisler 1948; Jugan 2021). Eisler also notes (Eisler 1948, pp. 195, 200–4), however, that the association between death and dancing is discovered in cultures far older than medieval Europe. In the 5th century, Augustine recalled similar practices among the Spanish Priscillianists, practices that Eisler conjectured may have ‘derived’ from the ritual dances of Alexandrian Jewish mystics, as described by Philo in the 1st century.24 A century earlier, Jerome also wrote about a burial fraternity, later identified as maqabrē—an Aramean/Syrian loanword meaning ‘buriers.’25

Our fascination with spectrality also clearly forms part of the longstanding tradition of Indo-European social and stage dramas. As Garland (1985, p. 13) contends, the ancient Greek viewed death as a process, instead of a punctual event. This view is reflected in the Greek funeral (kēdeia) as a ‘three-act drama’ from the laying out of the body, its internment, to its deposition. Greek tragedies further underscore how funerary rituals express reverence for the dead, emphasizing their ‘elevation’ and transition to the other realm, where “the dead preserve the same status which they enjoyed on earth” (Garland 1985, p. 71, cf. pp. 8, 21ff.).

Theatrical representation of death extends into Roman tragedy as well. In Seneca’s tragedies, for instance, Thyestes and Oedipus, “the stage becomes a liminal space between the upper world and underworld, between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead.” (Wild 2014, p. 95). Such representations reflect a fascination with death as a transition. This preoccupation was also manifest in Roman public life. By as early as 70 BCE, the Romans had institutionalized executions as theatrical spectacle. People of all social classes participated in these blood festivals—not only as spectators, but also, at times, as gladiators or sacrificial vicars. These spectacular slaughters were arranged and ritualized as offerings (munera) to the gods, demonstrating that death and consecrated life are one. (Kyle 1998, pp. 2, 10, 40).

Medieval mystery plays (autos sacramentales, or Corpus Christi) also set death as ‘the central mystery,’ that is, ‘the eucharistic center’ for any narratives (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, pp. 115–16). The ever-looming presence of death on life’s horizon is vividly rendered in Medieval plays. One of the most striking examples appears in a tomb scene from the St. Gall passion play, where three grieving Marys sing the antiphon, “Media vita in morte sumus (in the midst of life, we are in death).” (Macardle 2007, p. 81). Lamentation as such is ‘extended’ in the late medieval Corpus Christi to amplify the joy of resurrection (Happé 2016, p. 189).

The spectrality of liminal rites was not confined to Western civilizations; it also flourished across Eastern and other non-Western cultures. As van der Leeuw ([1957] 1963, pp. 18–26, 44–48) recounts, numerous examples can be found throughout Africa and Asia. Among the Bushmen of South Africa, for instance, personifying the dead was believed to confer power as it transforms the living into the likeness of the dead. In both Melanesia and ancient Egypt, dancers donned mask to represent the spirits of the dead and to experience (a temporary) union with the dead for the duration of the performance.

Just as in danse macabre and other traditions where masked dancers or theatrical rites invoke the dead, Tibetan cemetery practice (chod) includes a secretive skeleton cham dance to express the transitory nature of reality (Pearlman 2002, pp. 35–37). In their sur ritual, practitioners make offerings and recite prayers for the dead, who are believed to exist in a spectral form known as the bardo. The term ‘bardo’ (lit. ‘in-between’), however, more broadly signifies any ‘intermediate state’ (or liminal state) as it refers to “what lies in between two illusory boundaries” (Khyentse 2020, p. 30). Any intermediate state, such as the present time, or even the transitory phase towards enlightenment, is a bardo. Traditional practices as such exemplify the spectral dimension of liminality as a threshold through which transformation—whether in stage or social dramas—becomes possible.

Citing Heiner Müller, Lehmann states that transformation is the ‘essential’ and ‘basic’ element in theatre, and associates it with ‘dying’ (Lehmann [1999] 2006, p. 47). ‘The ghosts of the dead’ is the ‘ritual prototype’ that haunt over every performance (Kolankiewicz 2008, p. 23). Role playing requires transformation, where actors become ‘liminal personae,’ as if they are in between “death and embryonic suspension” (Turner [1969] 2011, p. 95; cf. Turner 1985, p. 159; 1982, p. 26; Schechner 1985, p. 4). Just as much as theatre itself as “a festivity addressed to the dead” (Lehmann [1999] 2006, p. 70)—which is most clear in the works of Shakespeare, Racine, Yeats, Maeterlinck, Hölderlin, Beckett, Kantor, Müller, and Wilson (Fischer-Lichte ([2009] 2014, pp. 63–65)—, this ‘state of suspension’ reflects the spectrality of existence that defines the liminality of theatrum mundi.

All of these observations attest to von Balthasar’s conception of death as ‘the center of acting area’ (Die Mitte des Spielraums; von Balthasar [1978] 1992, p. 48). As apprehended from the biblical drama of salvation, Christ’s death is an ‘aporia,’ a paradoxical impasse in response to the ‘aporia’ of the world itself (von Balthasar [1969] 1993, p. 52; [1980] 1994, p. 76). It is an aporia not only because death is a ‘self-suspension’ (Selbstaufhebung) in uncertainty and certainty—a mystery that inevitably befalls every mortal being (von Balthasar [1980] 1994, p. 489)—but also because, here, action and inaction converge. Christ’s death is a ‘borderline’ (Grenze) where ‘passive letting-things happen’ paradoxically constitutes a ‘super-action’ (von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 380; [1980] 1994, p. 237). In alignment with the liminality of acting, death accounts for the dramatis personae as a ‘borderline concept’ (Grenzbegriff; von Balthasar [1973] 1988, p. 129). It is a borderline where activity and passivity coalesce, a surviving (survivance), a spectral return (une revenance spectrale) of both living and dying (Derrida 2010, p. 194).

For von Balthasar ([1978] 1992, p. 123), the life of Christ as our Image (eikon) embodies the “absolute hiatus between living-dying and Resurrection-Ascension.” His life demonstrated how death is not a plain terminal point but a liminal state that is ever present (überall gegenwärtig) and serves as the ‘inner form’ of His life (von Balthasar [1980] 1994, p. 495). Just as death and life are ‘perpendicular’ in Christ as our Image (von Balthasar [1997] 2012, p. 52), “[d]eath and life form a unity in us, like the faces of Janus” (von Balthasar [1983] 1998, p. 254). From our first breath, life unfolds under the shadow of its eventual cessation. Together they form an entwined force (puissance): the lifedeath, a carnivalesque ‘might’ (puisse) that constitutes ‘the performativity of any performative’ (la performativité d’un performatif; Derrida 2000, p. 116).

Just as death and life coexist from the very outset of our existence, the dramatis personae are spectral revenants on the stage (Mesguich 2006, pp. 11, 25, 32, 75; Mesguich and Viala 2011, pp. 88, 94). They must cease and return (revenir) ceaselessly, oscillating between identity and alterity. Every scene is a place of hauntings (un lieu de hantises), where characters are revived (Mesguich and Viala 2011, pp. 21–24, 122–23). Lifedeath, hereby, reflects that every spectacle is a spectracle, and every performance a ‘restored behavior.’ Spectrality thus attests to the world as a stage haunted by traces, and to us as actors that reenact the ghostly echoes of what has been and what is yet to come (l’avenir).

5. Conclusions

The metaphor of theatrum mundi—that human existence is a play on the world stage—has flourished across cultures and civilizations. The truth of the metaphor, as argued here, is grounded in the enactive nature of drama. Regardless of the competing metaphysical presuppositions, whether theistic or non-theistic, drama unfolds through actions. From stage drama to social drama, from Homer to Calderón to Brecht, drama exists only because roles are enacted. Whether in ritual initiations or theatrical rehearsals, sacred or secular, drama becomes drama only through enactment. Playwrights, spectators, directors, and even gods exist to make enactment happen. Without enactment, the metaphor of theatrum mundi collapses into empty abstraction.

The correlations of art and life, stage and society, as the metaphor implies, are more clearly evident when we shift our attention from metaphysical speculations to our own existence as role-players in the cosmic drama. The theatricality of the world rests on our existence as dramatis personae, which can only be grasped through the liminality of performance. The notion of liminality—first articulated by Van Gennep in his study of rites of passage and later elaborated by Turner into a theory of social drama—points to the transitional state where transformation occurs. Liminality not only marks the threshold (limen) between old and new personal status or social realities, but also describes role enactment as a transformation from the real self to the embodied character.

In both theatrical performance and rituals, role enactment unfolds within an ambiguous state, a space ‘betwixt and between’ the self and the persona. On stage, this threshold explains why actors are neither themselves nor the roles they perform. As Schechner remarks, liminality is the ‘double negative’ that sustains their transformative suspension. The same dynamic governs social drama, where crises arise and call for redressive actions. The liminal space between crises and redressive actions is inherent to the very character of society as a process. It serves as a stage for the personae to ‘rehearse’ actions in the interval between rupture and reintegration.

Derrida and Mesguich extend the liminality of actions in stage and social drama into the spectrality of existence itself. What Turner and Schechner observe as the liminal ‘betwixt and between’ of performance, Derrida and Mesguich describe as the spectral dimension of existence: lifedeath. This phenomenon is also represented in theatre. While the actor is living and breathing before the spectators, the role they re-enact is only a ghostly trace of another life. In this sense, the stage is always populated by ghosts (spectres): characters who are not alive, yet brought to life through enactment.

More fundamentally, lifedeath exposes the spectrality of our existence as a form of liminality, a threshold in between life and death. Spectrality means that death and life ceaselessly inhabit one another within us. It attests to our existence as liminal, thereby defining human action as a kind of performance in the theatrum mundi. Haunted by death, our lives unfold as acts of becoming, a ‘spectracle’ where every gesture carries the weight of transformation. The theatrum mundi metaphor thus recalls the spectral–liminal condition of existence itself. To exist is to inhabit thresholds between self and role, life and death, presence and absence. Enactment is, therefore, not ancillary but intrinsic to the human role as dramatis personae. We are always already role-players on the world stage.