This inaugural volume of the collection Entr’acte: études de théâtre et performance from the Centre for Theatre Studies at the University of Lisbon brings together a series of texts that substantiate and problematise the concept of illusion in the European theatrical space and the way in which critics, playwrights and directors have positioned themselves with regard to determining a theatrical specificity conducive to illusion.

Theatrical imitation in the Aristotelian sense led to the transformation of the stage into a veritable theatrum mundi and established different positions on the concept of verisimilitude, motivating the poetics of the dramatic text for many centuries and shaping the intensity of illusion in theatre in different ways. Illusion of truth, imitation of imitation, imago veritate imitatio vitae, speculum consuetudinis, theatrical creation could not, therefore, be alienated from its essential function of delectare and illudere.

Determining the referential/illusionist or non-referential/anti-illusionist axiology allows us to delineate the way in which each author/translator/actor, in their successive artistic productions, illustrated and theorised the problem of illusion and mimesis by creating diverse techniques that allowed them to respond to this complex question of the correspondence between reality and the creation of a certain vision of the world, of which mise en abyme and theatre in the theatre are just a few illustrations.