The often-normative description of theatre texts is largely permeated by spatial and material metaphors. Due to an efficacious paragon the drama is coined as a painting in the middle of the 17^th century, one hundred years later it becomes a wall, in the 19^th century eventually a pyramid. In the late 20^th century, theatre texts were declared machines, producing text carriers instead of figures. These normatively loaded terms already determine latently or even explicitly a specific theoretical approach. The conceptual ‘apparatus’ marginalizes the fact that texts are also temporally conditioned media. Therefore, this research project aims at identifying the epistemic practices of theatre text theories in order to reflect on the pertinent set of cognitive patterns, figures of speech and tropes as well as approaches in a critical way. Surprisingly, this endeavor has yet to ‘materialize’ and, at the same time, it can coalesce with recent research in literature science.

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