Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage gathers together a collection of theoretical plays written by close to one hundred of the leading scholars and artists of the contemporary stage in North America and the UK. These fragments, prose poems, microfictions, and microdramas—each no longer than a page—describe imaginary performance events that put theory itself onstage to imagine what is possible and impossible in the theatre. Each scenario is mirrored by a brief accompanying gloss—also a page in length—asking what these hypotheticals might open for our thinking about the theatre and the non-theatrical. The book builds on a long history of philosophers, artists, writers, and dramatists employing the theatre as a metaphorical way of imagining our world differently, but it stakes a unique claim on the significance of the theatre in contemporary thought. By turns beautiful and terrifying, these short pieces show the hopes and fears that this artform alone might realize.