In Place of a Show is a compelling account of Western theatre buildings in the 21st century theatres stripped of their primary purpose lying empty preserved as museums or demolished. Playfully combining firstperson narratives scholarly research and visual documents Augusto Corrieri explores the material and imaginative potentials of these places charting interconnections between humans birds vegetation and the beguiling animations of inanimate things such as walls curtains and seats. Across four chapters we learn of the uncanny dismantling and reconstitution of a German Baroque auditorium during the Second World War the phantasmal remains of a demolished music hall in Londons East End a Renaissance Italian theatre fleetingly transformed into an aviary by the appearance of a swallow and a lavish opera house emerging from the Amazon rainforest.