Theatre: Collaborative Acts stimulates creative thinking and discussions of artistic, social, and ethical questions through its interwoven themes of theatre as culture, collaboration, spatial art, and a fusion of the past and present.

The central premise of Theatre: Collaborative Acts is that theatre is collaboration or co-labor, which exists on many levels. To participate in theatre, as either audience member or practitioner, means to be at once an individual and part of a larger whole. It allows us to escape, relax, and refocus. Through the study of theatre, students develop an informed perspective for a lifetime of theatre-going in appreciation to help them enjoy, analyse, understand, read, visualise, and get the most out of many different types of theatre experiences. The Fourth Edition continues to emphasise the diversity of purpose and effect of theatre, and the collaborative nature of the theatrical process.