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What are the implications of fictional existence for an imaginary character or any other entity inhabiting a fictional world? What are the procedures which construct that existence and what their consequences at the semantic level? My paper discusses the answers to these questions by demonstrating the following hypotheses: in theatrical practices, there is a traditionally dominant model for the construction of fictional existence; within this model, the inhabitants of a fictional world obtain their existence through two kinds of semiotic procedures: an entity's presence in scenic space and the authority of certain speeches to validate existence; the semantic organization of fictional existence develops as a result not only of semiotic constructive principles but also of preassumptions the spectator activates based on his interpreting habits; the interaction between semiotic procedures and spectatorial operations generates, in this kind of fictional world, a particular semantic structure of the category of existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]