This book is based on the relationship between theatre and society and the idea that the Auto da Fé, the Inquisition ceremony in which those condemned for heresy and their sentences were announced publicly and with great fanfare, had a theatrical dimension. The church and the theatre have always been related in one way or another, and this condition led me to think that the manifestations of religious power used theatrical procedures in their elaboration and that there was an awareness of the effectiveness of theatre as an instrument for establishing order and correcting maladjusted behaviour. In the case of the Auto da Fé, there was the particularity that it operated simultaneously as an instaurator of terror and as a festival.

The audience adhered to this dual function, externalising their emotions, vocally accompanying the songs and prayers and inciting the unconfessed convicts to confess their crime. I am, and always have been, the kind of man who finds pretence the best way to hide and reveal himself. From the age of six, I knew I wanted to be an actor – without knowing exactly what that meant or how important it would be in society.

I just felt that I didn’t get tired (and I hoped I never would) of pretending. I was far from knowing that this pretence was my translation of the more general concept of representation. (…) There was, and is, a direct relationship between theatre and society. But this relationship was not limited to an entertainment function or to being one of the forms of artistic expression of the human being. There was and is an aesthetic utility in theatre that allows it to shape an ideology or a set of rules of conduct. In this way, theatre could function as a pedagogical and propagandistic tool.