Abstract Theatre, with its borderline praxis between entertainment and reflection, offers a precious opportunity to deliver difficult scientific or social issues within scientific dilemmas to all kinds of target groups, such as youngsters. But what makes Science Theatre an obvious choice for communicating natural science issues and dilemmas? What lies beneath this label? Is this concept at all new? The research agenda of the present article is centred on exploring the multifaceted phenomenon of Science Theatre. As a unifying device, we propose to approach Science Theatre from the point of view of communication theory. This allows us to transform the amorphous matter of the wide variety of Science Theatre performances into analytically manageable prototypes, as well as providing a robust base for exploring the affordances of different types of Science Theatre.