Considering the history of theater as a historical process of development from the lowest, elementary forms to complex, higher forms, the author sought to discover how theatrical art, the art of transforming a person into a different image, arose in history, what the main stages in its development it passed and what theatrical art has become from the point of view of this development. Affirming the transformation of a person into another being as a specific for the art of theater, the author tried to trace the path of development of theatrical art, starting from the phenomena that developed in the primitive communal system, up to the emergence and formation of theater in ancient Greek slave-owning society.