Long Live Theatre

“They have declared it dead many times, and it simply laughs. Just as these bones, with a soul, nerves, muscles and flesh, can come back to life, so can painting, time and again. Much to the dismay of its many gravediggers. Amen.” — Maurizio Bottoni, Memento mori

And so it is with theatre. Declared dead time and again, it has always survived the many apocalypses foretold for it—as though, over the centuries, it had discovered its own elixir. Long live theatre, then. In the alchemical tradition, the elixir possesses two distinct properties. The first is the best known: it prolongs life, or even grants immortality. It is the elixir of life that generations of alchemists sought but never found, and which history has consigned to myth. The second is less famous but no less ambitious: the elixir is also the substance capable of transmuting base metals into gold, bringing about the most radical transformation that matter can undergo.