This chapter examines the uniqueness of presence and embodiment in predramatic performance, and explores how a premodern understanding of the affordances of theatrical bodies would have inflected the experiences of players and spectators alike. Challenging the contention that a concentration upon the body is peculiar to contemporary theatre, it outlines how predramatic conventions serve to build a particular kind of ‘visceral presence’, with an especial focus on the symbolic power of movement. The chapter considers a wide range of case studies from both biblical and secular performance, including The Play of the Sacrament, Everyman, and the York Crucifixion play. It analyses a number of methods through which a distinctive actorly presence was produced through medieval theatre, such as the amateur nature of playing, its allegorical mode, and the continual creation of gaps between the performer and their character. By demonstrating the sophisticated ways in which meaning was conveyed through the bodies of both actors and audience members, we conclude that an interplay of complicity and critical distance was central to the communal and devotional ends of predramatic theatre.