Theater, as Roland Barthes has noted, appears as a particularly privileged semiological object. This is because it does not only operate like other art forms – such as literature and painting – with a single sign system, but rather unites a variety of heterogeneous sign systems (such as language and gesture, costume and decoration, music and lighting), each of which generates meaning according to different principles. If theater is to be understood and explored as a specific meaning-producing system, the individual sign systems involved must therefore be examined both in their respective uniqueness and in their relationships to one another. Following Coseriu's distinction in linguistics between the levels of system, norm, and speech, this investigation will be conducted in a systematic, historical, and contextual manner.