With the rise of theatre, symbolic construal takes on a distinctly public form. Unlike the sacred fixity of scripture, theatre stages possibility as spectacle—performed before and with the collective. Here the imagination is not bound by canon but animated through dramatisation: action, dialogue, and embodiment in time.
Theatre opens a unique symbolic space where social orders and cosmic tensions can be rehearsed, critiqued, and reimagined. The chorus in Greek tragedy gives voice to communal perspective, mediating between the hero’s struggle and the audience’s collective recognition. Comedy exposes the absurdity of power and convention, playfully inverting hierarchies. In both, the symbolic field is enacted in a shared present, uniting performers and spectators in a temporary but potent horizon of possibility.
What distinguishes dramatic construal is its emphasis on immediacy and resonance. The script is not sufficient on its own; meaning arises through gesture, tone, and interaction. Performance actualises potential not as a fixed text but as an unfolding relational field. Each performance is singular, yet anchored in shared forms and expectations. In this way, theatre embodies the relational ontology of construal itself: possibility is staged, recognised, and reabsorbed into the collective imagination.
Theatre also extends symbolic imagination into civic life. Public performance can legitimate authority, dramatise justice, or destabilise the taken-for-granted. It is both a mirror and a laboratory of the social order, where possibility is tested against the gaze of the many.
In dramatic construal, the collective no longer encounters symbolic order only through text or mythic narrative but through living performance. Here the horizon of possibility is embodied, reflexive, and fleeting, yet enduring in its impact: an art of public imagination, continually shaping how societies see themselves and what they might yet become.
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