There is no clear evidence about the origins of theatre, so all theories are conjecture^{1 2}. The most widely accepted theory, championed by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, envisions theatre as emerging out of myth and ritual². Aristotle suggested that mimesis (imitation) is innate in humans, and that theatre probably came from the dithyramb, a hymn sung or chanted before religious rituals in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine, rebirth, and fertility¹.