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The World as a Stage brings together a key group of international, contemporary artists whose works investigate ideas of ‘theatre,’ staging and performance.

This is the first exhibition at Tate Modern to bring the realm of performance into dialogue with gallery-based work. The World as a Stage includes numerous large installations, sculptures, performances, participatory works and events and several new pieces made specifically for the exhibition.

In different ways, the works frame the viewer’s presence in the gallery and point to everyday activity in the world as a form of theatre; reconsidering the baroque notion of ‘the world as a stage’ in the twenty-first century.




Catherine Sullivan initially trained as an actress, and is best known for theatre and video work that explores the conventions of performance and role-playing. Her video installation The Chittendens: The Resuscitation of Uplifting (2005) was made in collaboration with the composer Sean Griffin, who wrote the score. It features 16 actors dressed to represent stereotypes from nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. The actors follow a series of behavioural patterns, gestures or movements devised by Sullivan, which are composed into sequences that can be performed like a musical score. By focusing so intensely on acting technique, and isolating actions and emotions from their original context, Sullivan reveals the raw artifice underlying the naturalistic surface of performance.