This thesis is a 'practice-led' project that uses observational documentation methods, a long-term collaboration with three live artists, and a narrative analysis to encourage a visual display of 'knowing' the person who makes live art, the performance work itself and the reality of producing and archiving live art. My practice of documenting live performances produces digital representations of the three artists I collaborated with. The fragmented and non-linear expressions of the live performances, which can be viewed in the video documents, also find echo in the life history interviews of the artists. Triangulated with an examination of the artists' websites, these diverse texts provide insight into how the live artists make sense of their embodied autobiographical experiences in a virtual environment. A post-structuralist narrative analysis proposes that the live and online performance-narratives constitute the artists' self as 'an artist' and examines these texts for ideas of the 'self-portrait' and of 'life as experienced'. The research suggests this is especially helpful to the audience's meaning-making processes when engaging with Live Art. The thesis investigates the three artists' representations of the body, specifically their strategies to compel a disruptive reading of nudity, femininity and motherhood. Other performative strategies found in these artists' work lead to discussions on ritual enfleshed in performance, based on Richard Schechner's (1995) understanding of iterative practices, and of participatory incantations that integrate narratives found in myths into narratives of selfhood and community. This thesis aims to develop the understanding of contemporary performance art pratice through examples of three artists' autobiographical performativity in live and online environments. The thesis advances narrative theory beyond its literary framework through a visual and practice-based approach. By linking narrative theory with visual methods this project seeks to demonstrate that experiential approaches could be relevant to narrtaive researches, visual anthropologists, performance ethnographers, as well as live artists, all faced with the inevitability of mediatisation. It contributes to ideas on the digital dispersions of the live artists' identity as not a fracturing of the unified body experienced in live performance but instead as a place for the artists to exercise agency through virtual performativity. The thesis consists of two parts, a website (http://bsdroth.wix.com/thesis2013) and a written text. The online videos and the written text, when read together, form a performative analysis towards the 'knowing who' of the artists. It contributes to the growing interest in methodologies that investigate, document and present cultural experiences and their perceived value. The online presentation of my practice also demonstrates the digital and virtual environment the live artists' work operates in, as exemplified in this thesis. The website is a physical manifestation of integral ideas in this project, around authenticity, ownership and virtual experiences.

This practice-as-research project discusses modes, processes and aesthetics of contemporary dramaturgy, as practiced in experimental theatre and dance works in Europe from the 1990s onwards. In order to do this, the project draws particularly on discourses around ‘drama’ and suggests that the term can be redefined and usefully rehabilitated for both analysis and the creation of experimental performances. More specifically, this project defines drama (deriving from the Greek dro=act) as stage action, and dramaturgy (deriving from the Greek drama + ergo= work) as a practice that works endlessly for the creation of this drama/action on stage and is therefore always connected with it. In order to approach the newly proposed notion of ‘experimental drama’, this research uses the six main dramatic elements offered by Aristotle in his Poetics: plot, character, language, thought, the visual and music. Furthermore, it adds a seventh element: the spectator and contemporary understandings around the conditions of spectatorship. It then offers an analysis of dramaturgical processes and aesthetics of experimental stage works through these elements. Given that this is a practice-as-research project, it is accordingly multi-modal and offers its perspectives on dramaturgy and experimental drama through both critical and performance texts, documentation traces (photographs and video recordings) of artistic practice – all present in this thesis – and a live event; all these modes complement each other and move constantly between the stage and the page to proceed with the research’s inquiries. The current thesis has borrowed the dramaturgical structure of two artistic projects, created within the frame of this research practice, to generate its writings. The introductory parts of this text place the work within the discourse on practice-as-research and discuss the project’s proposal for an analysis of contemporary dramaturgy through drama. The Short (Research) Stories that follow analyze experimental works, created both within the frame of this research practice and outside it, by other artists, following the Aristotelian model. The element of spectatorship intervenes in this analysis instead of standing separately in the thesis. The project’s closing live event returns from the page to the stage to continue and add to discussions around central issues of the work, in its various distinct modes.

The outward form of the text in which the spiritual search is housed is 'performance-ritual', that is, performed 'ritual'. This genre has its 'performance' roots in the dance pioneers and its 'ritual' roots in the Christian church. The contents of this performed text is influenced by an emerging ecofeminist consciousness. In this way, the thesis has a grassroots inspiration as well as crossing academic areas of performance studies, ritual studies, and feminist spirituality. The project begins by an examination of 20th Century feminist and ecofeminist writing on spirituality, which evokes the subjective, embodied and historically contextualised, with particular focus on body and nature. Additional concepts of place, holding and letting go are introduced. Particular performance-rituals are introduced under the overall heading 'the spiralling journey of exorcism and ecstacy'. They include earlier work, as well as work performed specifically for this thesis, Centre of the Storm. The study re-situates 'ritual' as a subjective, embodied and contextualised performed event. It challenges ritual discourse to incorporate 'spirit', and feminist spirituality to incorporate the material world, through 'place', 'family', and the ritual actions of 'holding' and 'letting go'. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University

This dissertation explores experimentation--across experimental music, experimental theatre, and experimental film, in addition to the term's etymology, scientific usage, and colloquial deployment--in order to derive a deeper understanding of what we mean when we say an artwork is experimental, and how this term can help us understand current artistic praxes and products emerging from performance studies contexts. In this document, I advocate for the term experimental performance as both an umbrella term and as a specific genre name for the artistic activity of contemporary artists working between experimental theatre and performance art, often within performance studies contexts. Ultimately, citing the historical richness of experimental art and its long-standing relationship to the academy as evidence, I advocate for the further academic acknowledgement of experimental performance.

This thesis presents my original contribution to knowledge, a combination of critical media and performance theories to analyse the production and augmentation of postdigital experiential spaces in Punchdrunk Theatre Company. Distributed agency is key to Punchdrunk's work, with makers within the company and audiences both being active participants in meaning-making, across complex and detailed interfaces. In order to investigate the making cultures on ‘both sides' of the interface, I undertook a two-year participant study as a researching designer within the company during the build of the productions The House Where Winter Lives and The Drowned Man in 2011-2014, gathering field data in the form of extensive interviews with members of the company and audience participants, supported by diary notations and photographs. I studied the processes and methods that extend, distribute and regulate agency to both audiences and makers within the company, and identified devices and features of the interaction design of the company that produce the immanent subject-event relationships that support immersion in their work. A core aspect of this research concerns the relationship between immersion and the sublime, and how subject-event relationships (immanent vs. transcendent) contribute to engendering sublime interactive experiences. I have analysed the consequences of this for the modelling of participation in interaction design, and how it influences conditions of possibility within interactive systems across physical, digital and blended media. The conclusion of this research includes the definition of a postdigital sublime, and proposes a delinquent system aesthetic that integrates proxies for gravity through articulation of the ‘shadow side' of interaction design.

Un pan représentatif de la scène performative contemporain, en France, comme en Angleterre, se distingue par un intérêt commun pour la question du corps quotidien. Faisant fi des principes de représentation, de logique narrative ou de personnage, les praticiens d’aujourd’hui investissent des corporéités ordinaires et faillibles produisant des état de présence diffractés ainsi qu’un régime de spectateur fondé sur la reconnaissance d’une commune incompétence. Au moyen de temporalités scéniques suspendues, d’un ralentissement du mouvement et d’une inflexion des logiques de représentation et de perception, ils modélisent des outils de résistance à l’encontre des dynamiques accélérées d’une production intensifiée imposées par les institutions et l’économie culturelles. Renonçant à la séduction du spectaculaire et au fétiche de la technique, ils décident de produire moins. Inventant de nouvelles modalités d’un travail solidaire (collaborations éphémères, rencontres nouées selon une logique de projet, micro-communautés), ils dessinent, sur le plateau, un espace d’entente qui puisse reposer sur une égalité de condition entre performers et spectateurs. Loin de s’inscrire dans un geste de rupture ou de souscrire à un quelconque idéal utopiste, les artistes de la scène performative contemporaine actualisent une praxis critique de la scène qui tâche de créer, dans le temps de l’événement théâtral, une nouvelle façon d’être ensemble. / The contemporary performance scene, in both France and England, can be distinguished by a common interest in the ‘everyday body.’ Discarding principles of representation, narrative logic, and characterisation, many of today’s practitioners choose instead to reflect a deliberately fallible and ordinary sense of their own corporality. This results in a notion of presence in which the presented body can somehow disappear and where a certain complicity with the audience is founded on a sense of common incompetence. The use of real time (as opposed to theatrical time) the restriction of movement, and a questioning and dismantling of the traditional ideas of theatrical presentation and reception, all form ways of resisting the accelerated and intensified production cycle imposed by the cultural economy in which the work is produced. Refusing to be seduced by notions of grand spectacle or perfect technique, these performers produce less within their performance and therefore embrace an “anti-productive” creative pattern. At the same time, inventing new ways of working together (ephemeral collaborations, meetings happening upon a project-based logic, micro-communities), they create, in the theatre, a democratic space based on an equality of status between performers and spectators. Without seeking revolution or utopia, they enable a critical investigation of the theatrical space that can, for the duration of an event, create new ways for all those present to experience being together within that space.

The subject of this diploma thesis is the location and design of a theater building in the body of a regional center - the town of Uherské Hradiště. The existing theater building is housed in a rented Sokolovna (sport-cultural building) on Tyršovo Square. There is also a small stage in a house on Mariánské náměstí. The capacity of the auditorium of the large scene is 370 spectators, corresponding to the needs of the city and the region. However the size of the stage is completely inadequate, the height of the flytower, the absence of back and side stages, Also, the workshops and warehouses are currently located away from the theater. The project addresses the current unfavorable situation of the theater, which is, in the long-term, interest to the city of Uherské Hradiště itself. My intention is to create an open-air theater complex outside the building - a city living room - following the building of a former prison. Object visible from the main road, clearly recognizable, welcoming visitors. Theater composed of three masses created not only for actors, but primarily for its visitors. The object works with the motif of the way through it (possibly around a tranquil pedestrian zone, for example, by shopping, walking, but it provides the opportunity not to be primarily on the way but also on the target.) The current form of the place is unacceptable to the city.

No description available.

Ausgangspunkt der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, das theaterhistorische Phänomen des chinesischen experimentellen Theaters komparatistisch sowohl als das Ergebnis der Begegnung zweier sehr verschiedener kulturhistorischer Linien (China/ Europa) zu beschreiben als auch in den traditionellen Kontext chinesischer Theaterinnovationen einzuordnen und aus ihm heraus zu erklären. Behandelt wird u.a. der machtpolitische Kontext interkultureller Begegnungen. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob man auf einem "transzendentalen Hügel hockend" China beobachten kann. Man ist immer wieder mit der Frage konfrontiert, aus welcher Perspektive man bei der Untersuchung anderer Kulturen zu adäquaten Ergebnissen kommen kann. Soll man einen aussenstehenden Beobachterposten behaupten oder soll man anerkennen, dass die eigene Anwesenheit vor Ort den Beobachtenden bereits involviert in das zu Beobachtende oder soll man sich seiner eigenen Aktivität bewusst werden und den ohnehin fiktiven Objektivitätsstatus bewusst aufgeben? Ich konnte während der Arbeit an der Inszenierung "Leg deine Peitsche nieder - Woyzeck" in Peking künstlerische und Alltagskommunikation erleben und Einsichten gewinnen, die ohne diese Arbeit unmöglich gewesen wären. Die chinesische Kultur hat bereits frühzeitig Schriftsysteme und eine Schriftkultur ausgebildet. Dennoch haben meine Untersuchungen ergeben, dass die Bereiche der Wissensvermittlung (Lern- und Lehrverhalten), der darstellenden Künste und der sozialen Kommunikation bis in unser Jahrhundert hinein von einer Tradition oraler Techniken und Kommunikation geprägt sind. Ganz wesentlich ist z.B. traditionell der Aspekt der LEIBLICHKEIT bei der Wissensvermittlung. Das Leibwissen eines Lehrers wird durch ständiges Üben und Wiederholen durch den Schüler in dessen Leib inkorporiert. Die Schüler (im profanen, im religiösen oder künstlerischen Bereich) werden hauptsächlich in das WIE der Übungen, nicht aber in das WARUM eingewiesen, weil sich aus der Logik dieses Denkens ergibt, dass sich aus der ausgefeilten Qualität des Geübten mit der Zeit der Sinn dessen über den Leib des Schülers von selbst erschließt. Oralen Techniken von Wissensvermittlung ist es eigen, dass sie dem Wiederholen größeren Wert beimessen als dem Neuerfinden. Dies ist eine Traditionslinie, die noch heute für das chinesische Sprechtheater wirksam ist. Innovation im chinesischen Kontext bedeutet vor allem Detailinnovation, aufbauend auf ein gegebenes Modell. Die chinesische Gesellschaft verfügt über ein reiches Instrumentarium theatraler Kommunikation. Aufgrund der Sozialstruktur und des ausgeprägten Relationsdenkens verfügen die kulturell Kommunizierenden über "shifting identities" wie Jo Riley es für die Darsteller im chinesischen traditionellen Musiktheater feststellte und wie Rosemarie Juttka-Reisse ein adäquates Phänomen für die Praxis von sozialem Rollenwechsel in sozio-kulturellen Kommunikations- und Interaktionsprozessen nachwies. "Shifting identies" bedeutet, dass Kommunizierende in der Lage sind, spontan und flexibel auf neue Kommunikationskontexte mit dem entsprechenden performativen Instrumentarium zu reagieren. Dieser Umstand hat weitreichende Konsequenzen für die Rollengestaltung im chinesischen Theater. Zum Beispiel ist der Brecht'sche Begriff der Verfremdung aus diesem Grunde NICHT oder bestenfalls nur partiell auf das chinesische Theater anwendbar. Die Brecht'sche Verfremdungstheorie ist nicht dem chinesischen Theater abgeschaut, sondern auf das chinesische Theater projiziert. Im Zusammenhang mit dem Leiblichkeitskonzept steht eine spezifische Vorstellung der EINVERLEIBUNG von Wissen, auch nicht-chinesischen Wissens. Beispielsweise wird bis in die 1990er Jahre hinein immer wieder auf die VERDAUUNGSMETAPHER zurückgegriffen. Das Einverleibungsprinzip, welches in engster Verbindung mit dem chinesischen Ahnenkult steht, ist mindestens einmal einer Fundamentalkritik unterzogen worden. Kurioserweise geschah dies nach der Einverleibung westlichen Wissens, insbesondere der Fortschrittsidee und der Vorstellung evolutionärer historischer Weiterentwicklung. Lu Xun nämlich prägte die Metapher der Menschenfresserei, die sich auf die als reaktionär erkannte Einverleibung "feudalistischen" Wissens aus der alten, dem Westen unterlegenen chinesischen Gesellschaft bezog. Seither gibt es die "fortschrittliche" und die "reaktionäre" Verdauung, wobei der Diskurs um kulturelle Identität, um Erneuerung und Bewahrung immer wieder neu festzulegen versucht, was gegebenfalls nützlich oder nutzlos ist. Die Entstehung des chinesischen experimentellen Theaters ist ohne das Eingebettetsein in historische Linien der chinesischen Theatergeschichte nicht erklärbar. Aneignungsmuster in bezug auf die Aufnahme neuer Anregungen aus anderen Kulturen haben eine traditionelle Logik entwickelt, die man nur erkennen und einordnen kann, wenn man sich ausführlich den historischen Voraussetzungen und Rahmenbedingungen von Theater in China widmet. Deshalb bin ich auf diese historischen Linien ausführlich eingegangen. Das experimentelle Theater in China setzt diese Linie fort. Deshalb kann man schlussfolgern, dass das chinesische Sprechtheater "eine Art Pekingoper mit anderen Mitteln" ist, und nicht ein bürgerlich-westliches Sprechtheater mit chinesischer Kolorierung. Das chinesische Theater hat sich über die langen historischen Zeiträume seiner Entstehung als sehr aufnahmefähig für interkulturelle Anregungen gezeigt. Man kann sagen, dass es das Ergebnis dieser Interaktionsprozesse ist. In diesem Sinne ist die Integration westlicher Theaterstile und damit auch die Entstehung des experimentellen Theaters als traditionelle Strategie im Umgang mit dem Fremden anzusehen. Es handelt sich tendenziell nicht (nur) um einen Ausdruck von Modernität, sondern von Tradition. Es ist in der chinesischen Theatergeschichte nicht um die Echtheit/ Authentizität des adaptierten ausländischen Materials gegangen, sondern hauptsächlich um die Anwendbarkeit im eigenen Kontext. Das wiederum führt folgerichtig zu dem Schluss, dass es z.B. keine "falsche" Rezeption westlichen Theaters in China geben kann, sondern nur eine chinesische. Der experimentelle Zugang zu neuen Formen innerhalb der chinesischen Theaterkultur ist ein historisch praktizierter. Die chinesische Praxis des Experiments ist historisch verbunden mit einer Praxis des Ausprobierens, Integrierens, Ausschmückens, einer Art Patchwork-Strategie. Im Gegensatz zum westlichen Begriff des Experiments ist diese Praxis nicht an abstrakte Hypothesenbildung und die systematische Beweisführung gebunden. Hauptinstrument neuer Erkenntnisse war die empirische Beobachtung. Die Entstehung des experimentellen chinesischen Theaters im 20. Jahrhundert, welches erstmals an verschiedene Begrifflichkeiten gebunden wird und nicht einfach als historische Praxis dem chinesischen Theater inhärent ist, deutet auf eine neue Qualität dieses Phänomens in der chinesischen Theatergeschichte hin. Die neue Qualität im Vergleich zur historisch-experimentellen Praxis besteht darin, dass die chinesische Kultur erstmals in ihrer Geschichte als Hochkultur Asiens mit einem ernstzunehmenden, hegemonial operierenden Feind konfrontiert war, der mit seinem ökonomisch-militärischen Potenzial die Qualität der chinesischen Kultur als Ganzes in Frage stellte. Nun sahen sich die chinesischen Eliten gezwungen, die westlichen Mittel zum chinesischen Zweck des Überlebens zu machen. Aus diesem Grunde wurden westliche Ideen und Praktiken, wie z.B. das bürgerliche Sprechtheater rezipiert. Dies musste als Praxis aber auch als Begriff umgesetzt werden. Aus diesem spezifischen Entstehungskontext ergibt sich eine unterschiedliche Richtung der Theateravantgarden in China und im Westen. Während die historische Theateravantgarde im Westen in ihrer Kritik am bürgerlichen Theaterkonzept und in ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit Industrialisierungs- und Technologiesierungsprozessen auf "Retheatralisierung" des Theaters drängte, gingen die chinesischen Theaterkünstler den entgegengesetzten Weg. Die neuen historischen Erfahrungen ließen sich in den volkstümlichen Geschichten und den historischen Analogien des traditionellen chinesischen Theaters und in ihrer stilisierten Theatralität nicht mehr adäquat darstellen. Plötzlich wurde ein neues Realismuskonzept, welches nach DETHEATRALISIERUNG drängte, wesentlich. Darüberhinaus gehört es zur historischen Linie des chinesischen Theaters, dass es stark profitierte sowohl von nicht-chinesischen Anleihen anderer Theaterkulturen als auch von den Volkskünsten der eigenen Kultur. Es waren zunächst Laiendarsteller und Amateurtheaterkünstler, die in den 1920er Jahren die vielfältigen Kategorien des chinesischen "experimentellen" Theaters erfanden und später in einen professionellen Status überführten. Neben den kulturellen Einflüssen des westlichen Imperialismus war China ebenfalls mit dem hegemonialen Bestreben insbesondere des sowjetischen Kulturimperialismus konfrontiert. Die sowjetische Kulturpolitik favorisierte das Stanislawski-Konzept. Dieses wurde dann zunächst, nach Gründung der VR China 1949, zu einem der Grundpfeiler der Idee eines neu zu entwickelnden chinesischen Nationaltheaters. Seit den 1980er Jahren wird es zunehmend kritisiert. Seitdem werden andere westliche Konzepte interessant. Dazu gehören die Konzepte der westlichen historischen Avantgarde ebenso wie die des absurden und weitestgehend postmodernen Theaters. Seit den 1990er Jahren sind zwei Haupttendenzen im modernen chinesischen Theater festzustellen. Zum einen unterliegt das Theater rigiden Kommerzialisierungstendenzen. Zum anderen sieht sich das Theater einer Vielzahl neuer Unterhaltungsmedien (TV, Kino, Karaoke, Shows etc.) gegenüber, die es veranlassen, sich verstärkt auf die spezifischen Möglichkeiten theatralen Ausrucks zu besinnen. Das führt dazu, dass nun sowohl das theatrale Potenzial des klassischen chinesischen Theaters interessant wird ebenso wie die Retheatralisierungsversuche der westlichen Avantgarde. Seit Mitte der 1980er Jahre ist eine erneute, hitzige Debatte über Begriff und Inhalt von experimentellem Theater im chinesischen Kontext zu beobachten. / The starting point of this paper was both to describe the theatre-historical phenomenon of Chinese experimental theatre in a comparative way, as the result of the encounter of two culture-historical lines differing very much (China/Europe) and to put it in its proper historic context and thus to explain from its context. The power-political context of intercultural encounters is dealt with. The question arises whether one would be able to watch China at all " sitting on a transcen-dental hill". You are constantly facing the question from which perspective you can achieve adequate results when researching/ investigating foreign cultures. Should you maintain your (external) observer status or should you recognise that your own presence at the site involves the observer what he watches or should you consciously give up the anyhow fictitious status of objectivity. While staging "Put down your whip - Woyzeck" in Beijing at the State theatre called Central Experimental Theatre I could experience both artistic and every-day communication, without which this paper would and could never have been written. The Chinese culture has developed writing systems and a written culture early on in history. Nevertheless, my study has shown, that instruction (learner and teacher behaviour), performing arts and social communication have been highly influenced by the oral tradition of communication throughout the centuries. The aspect of corporality in instruction is essential. The teacher's incorporated knowledge is transferred to the student's body through permanent exercise and repetition/revision. The student (worldly, religious and artistic spheres) is taught HOW to do the exercise but not necessarily WHY because part of this thinking is the idea that the awareness of the meaning of the skill comes to the student through his body. This implies that it is a characteristic feature of oral instruction/information stresses repetition rather than innova-tion. This line of tradition has always been efficient for the Chinese spoken drama, even today. Innovation in a Chinese context means chiefly innovation of detail based on a model given. The Chinese society developed a rich variety of tools of theatrical communication. Due to the social structure and a well-developed relational thinking the cultural communicators have "shifting identities" as Jo Riley stated it in terms of the performers in the Chinese traditional music thea-tre. Rosemarie Juttka-Reisser confirmed an adequate phenomenon for the practice of switching social roles in processes of socio-cultural communication and interaction. "Shifting identities" means that communicators are capable of spontaneously and quickly responding to new communication contexts through adequate performative sets of instruments. This has an impact on the performance of roles in Chinese theatre. Therefore the Brechtian term of alienation, for instance, can not or only partly be applied to Chinese theatre. Thus, the Brechtian theory of alienation is not derived from Chinese theatre but rather projected to it. Linked to the concept of incorporation of knowledge is a specific image of incorporation of knowledge including the non-Chinese one. Up to the 1990s the metaphor of digestion had been used again and again. The principle of incorporation which is closely connected with ancestor cults underwent fundamental criticism at least once. Curiously enough, this happened after the incorporation of Western knowledge, in particular of the idea of progress and evolution/ revolution. Lu Xun coined the metaphor of cannibalism. This relates to the traditional incorporation of the so-called "feudal" knowledge based in the Chinese culture which has been understood as inferior to the West. Since then there has been "progressive" and "reactionary" digestion; discourse about cultural identity, about renewal and preservation of Chinese values has always been trying to re-determine what is useful or useless respectively. The appearance and existence of the Chinese experimental theatre can not be explained without it being embedded in the line of Chinese (theatre)history. Patterns of acquisition in terms of the perception of new stimuli from other/foreign cultures have developed a traditional logic which can only be recognized and categorized if you have a deeper understanding of the historic condition and the whole framework of theatre in China. Therefore I dealt with this historical line in detail. The experimental theatre in China continues this line to a certain extend. This results in the Chinese spoken theatre being "a kind of Beijing opera with a different approach" but not a bourgeois Western spoken drama with a Chinese touch. Throughout its history the Chinese theatre has always readily absorbed intercultural stimuli. So you can say that these processes of interaction have contributed to contemporary Chinese theatre. Thus you can regard the integration of Western theatre styles including the development of the experimental theatre a highly traditional strategy for encountering and dealing with the foreign element. This strategy is not an expression of modernity only but mainly of tradition. Chinese theatre history was not particularly interested in the authenticity of the adopted foreign material but in its application within the Chinese context. This has led to the conclusion that there cannot be any "wrong" perception of the Western theatre in China but only a Chinese. The experimental approach to new forms within the Chinese theatre culture has been used all the time. The Chinese experimental practice has indeed been linked with integrating, ornamenting and trying out resulting in a kind of patchwork. In contrast to the Western term of experiments this practice does not depend on abstract hypotheses and proofs systematically shown. This is partly due to Western sciences focussing on mathematics while Chinese sciences were concentrating on dealing with problems of relations (physics). Therefore they (have) preferred empirical observation to mathematical analysis in order to achieve new knowledge. In contrast, the experimental Chinese theatre in the 20th century, reflects a new quality in their approach to theatre which, for the first time, attempts to use concepts like in the Western theatre. The reason for this new approach resulted from the fact that for the first time in its history Chinese culture as an Asian high culture was faced with a serious hegemonially operating enemy that questioned the quality of the Chinese culture as a whole through its economic and military potential. The Chinese intellectual elite was forced to respond to the Western threat by using Western methods (including spoken drama) in order to survive: using a Western means to a Chinese end. These specific historical circumstances and power relations have led to different directions of avantgarde theatre movements in China and the West in the early 20th century. Western and Chinese theatre artists went opposite ways: while the former initiated the Re-theatralisation in their criticism of the bourgeois theatre concept and of industrialisation; the latter focused on De-theatralisation which had become a new concept, that of realism/ naturalism. The new experiences of the time could no longer be expressed in their folktales and historical analogies of the traditional Chinese theatre and its stylised theatricality. Amateurs (in particular students of big cities) were the first to invent the various categories of a Chinese "experimental" theatre and later transformed its status into a professional one. Apart from cultural influences of Western (including Japan) imperialism China faced the same problems with the Soviet cultural imperialism. The Soviet cultural policy favoured Stanislavsky's concept. This idea became the basis of a new Chinese national theatre which was to develop after the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Since the 1980s it has increasingly been criticised. In addition other Western concepts have attracted attention including concepts of the Western historical avantgarde, the theatre of the absurd and post-modern theatre. Since the 1990s two major tendencies of modern Chinese theatre can be stated. On the one hand, the theatre is subject to rigid tendencies of commercialisation (which means that the state cut the subsidies), on the other hand, the theatre is confronted with a variety of new entertainment media (TV, cinema, karaoke, shows etc.) which make it remember its specific oppor-tunities of theatrical expression (now including traditional Chinese theatre forms). At the moment a new heated debate about the term and the content of experimental theatre is going on.