This study seeks to demonstrate connections between theatre and conflict, as inspired by metaphor and embodied by case studies of four theatrical organizations working in conflict zones: The Freedom Theatre in Palestine, Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, DAH Teater in Serbia, and Belarus Free Theatre in Belarus. In so doing, it attempts to name the overlaps and relationships as sub-concepts that exist as connective tissue between conflict and theatre, writ large. These sub-concepts - subverting to play, imagining hidden histories, embodying the unspeakable, and blurring illusion and reality - offer a taxonomy of various dimensions of the theatre-conflict relationship. This taxonomy explores the symbiotic embeddedness of theatre and conflict as a possible explanation for the existence of theatrical organizations in conflict zones.