This section offers a historical overview of how theatre engages with theories of the body expressed in religious, cultural, social, familial, and communal practices. I explore theatrical conventions from the Medieval period to the twenty-first century that inform how bodies appear on stage. Although twentieth-century theorists offer useful frameworks to analyze the body on stage, theatre makers have also implicitly offered theories of the body through its staging. Given how theatre offers its own theories of the body, Section One offers a historical overview of how theatre theorizes the body and ends with an engagement with modern theorists whose work expands understandings of the body in Theatre Studies.