Jesus Renteria

(No) Theater

This thesis proposes a series of five mobile, collapsible theaters that reconceive the public stage as a temporary, reconfigurable framework rather than a permanent building. Traveling across multiple sites in Los Angeles, these theaters temporarily anchor themselves in plazas, streets, and vacant lots, transforming ordinary urban spaces into sites of open-ended participation, collective gathering, and improvised performance. 

The work draws from El Lissitzky’s Proun paintings, translating their abstract geometries, spatial ambiguities, and shifting figure–ground relationships into architectural form. Each theater operates like a fragment of a painting made into a three-dimensional stage that folds, rotates, and reconstitutes itself depending on site conditions. 

The design process integrates drawing, physical modeling, and the craft of paper pop-up books to explore mechanisms of folding, collapsing, and deployment. These mechanisms are not only functional but also theatrical, revealing the act of transformation as part of the performance. 

Rather than serving as fixed destinations, these nomadic spatial objects alternately stand apart from and merge into their surroundings, allowing the city itself to become the performance. They do not deliver pre-determined content but instead, the (No)Theater offers an open framework that returns the stage, and the voice, back to the public.