This opening chapter sets out the agenda for the book to follow. It introduces the idea of postdramatic theatre, as defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann, setting it in the context of earlier scholarship on theatre and performance, from Berthold Brecht and Peter Szondi to Erika Fischer-Lichte. It then moves on to explore the value of the postdramatic as a lens through which to better understand early performance, suggesting that the predramatic offers a potentially generative way of thinking about performance and spectatorship in the period before the building of (semi)permanent theatres in Britain. After a discussion of the tacit centrality of the theatre (as building, idea, and commercial enterprise) to Lehmann’s sense of Drama, the chapter demonstrates the numerous ways in which pre-theatrical performance replicates or anticipates key aspects of Lehmann’s conception of postmodern performance, taking its examples from a wide range of religious and secular plays from the period from the religious mysteries to the late Tudor interludes.