The theater of modernity is based on aesthetic energies. Since the 1880s, however, it is electrical energies, generated from fossil fuels in power plants, that begin to circulate in the theater. Installed is a mysterious entity that is still traded as a life force and already stands for progress through technology. With the electrification of the theater, electrical industry becomes respectable and stagecraft modernistic. The backdrops, which only appear dusty in the spotlight, are disposed of, and the picture machine becomes spatial art. But more important are the institutional...