Those among the twentieth-century theories of theater that grew out of the main currents of the humanistics of the time placed the literature-theater relationship at the center of attention (as if to spite the visions of the proponents of the New Theater and theater itself, stubbornly proclaiming its autonomy for throughout the twentieth century). The examination of this very relationship defined the real scope of the semiotics of theater (signs inscribed in the dramatic-literary structure were easier to distinguish and classify). And it also predetermined the achievements of theatrical sociology in research into conventions, understood as the synthesis of social experience in dramatic form. The proximity of points of view even led to the unification of the two orientations in a socio-semiotic formula. Similar philosophical reflection on the theater (inspired by phenomenology or existential philosophy) deepened the understanding of the process of the making-present of literary phenomena (character, fable, side text) in the privileged, three-dimensional space of the stage.

The phenomenon of the transfiguration of the homogeneous verbal material into the complex multi-material spectacle was variously defined: as the “spatialization of literature” (Kowzan); spatial-temporal concretization for the sake of the psychophysical existential substructure (Ingarden); “the making-present” of drama in the here and now (Gouhier), the “authenticity” of social experience inscribed in the drama (Burns). But the non-spatial and extra-temporal linguistic materials were always opposed to the first-handedness of the spectacle occurring “here and now,” creating—in phases—the phenomenon of character and a fabularity approximating that of the epic but subjected to a greater, formal rigor (for instance, conic structure).

In all three of the models invoked here, the rule of the “makingpresent of the word” is privileged: the word—as sign (structuralists and semioticians), the word—as action (sociologists and anthropologists), the word—as expression of existence (philosophers of theater). This dependence on the word turned out in spite of everything to be the foundation—regarded from a theoretical point of view—of the theatrical convention of the twentieth century. The theater deprived of a rhetorical raison d’etre renounced the perfection of the reflection of an image of the world for the sake of discovery (spatial-temporal) in a cycle of theatrical revolutions. Yet the record of these revolutionary conceptions continued to be perpetuated in the independently existing dramatic forms (“written on stage,” as they may have been).