when did experimental theatre begin

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A Brief Intro to… Experimental Theatre

It was church services at Easter in the tenth century that popularised theatrical entertainment in Britain, and by the fourteenth century, it was standard practice to perform Bible stories. From the mid-fifteenth century hundreds of indoor and outdoor theatres were emerging in London, the most famous being the Globe, well-known for staging Shakespeare’s works.

Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre) began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular and, in general, the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical.

Like other forms of the avant-garde, it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois theatre. It tries to introduce a different use of language and the body to change the mode of perception and to create a new, more active relation with the audience.

Traditionally, there is a highly hierarchical method of creating theatre – a writer identifies a problem, a writer writes a script, a director interprets it for the stage together with the actors, the performers perform the director and writers collective vision. Various practitioners started challenging this and started seeing the performers more and more as creative artists in their own right. This started with giving them more and more interpretive freedom and devised theatre eventually emerged. This direction was aided by the advent of ensemble improvisational theater, as part of the experimental theatre movement, which did not need a writer to develop the material for a show or “theatre piece.” In this form the lines were devised by the actors or performers.

Within this many different structures and possibilities exist for performance makers, and a large variety of different models are used by performers today. The primacy of the director and writer has been challenged directly, and the director’s role can exist as an outside eye or a facilitator rather than the supreme authority figure they once would have been able to assume.

As well as hierarchies being challenged, performers have been challenging their individual roles. An inter-disciplinary approach becomes more and more common as performers have become less willing to be shoe-horned into specialist technical roles. Simultaneous to this, other disciplines have started breaking down their barriers. Dance, music, visual art and writing become blurred in many cases, and artists with completely separate trainings and backgrounds collaborate very comfortably.

Here in the UK, it was companies such Shunt and Punchdrunk as well as performances like ‘ You Me Bum Bum Train ’ that helped introduce experimental and immersive theatre to the masses.

Shunt, a London-based performance collective, was founded in 1998. Most of the co-founders of Shunt met at Central School of Speech and Drama in London on the Advanced Theatre Practice MA in 1997/1998, which specialises in collaborative practice. Shunt’s work is centered on immersive, site-specific performance, usually in a grand scale, and has been supported by Britain’s Royal National Theatre, NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and Arts Council England. It has been the subject of much critical and academic discussion over the last decade. Some believe the idea of Shunt is to “challenge the model of the single author” but the founding idea was simply to “explore the live event”. The group agrees on a theme or subject and as individual artists they all contribute proposals for scenes. Though they strive for minimal hierarchy, there are normal roles that the artists fulfill later in the process, such as lighting designer, sound designer, director, performers etc.

Punchdrunk was formed in 2000, by Artistic Director Felix Barrett MBE. Since its inception, Punchdrunk has pioneered a form of “immersive” theatre in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. This format is related to “promenade theatre” but Felix Barrett prefers the term “site-sympathetic” when describing their work. In a typical Punchdrunk production, audience members are free to roam the performance site, which can be as large as a five-story industrial warehouse. They can either follow the performers and themes (there are usually multiple threads at any instant), or simply explore the world of the performance, treating the production as a large art installation. Masks are another signature element of Punchdrunk’s work. Barret says when the company “…introduced masks, suddenly inhibition fell away and people found a sense of freedom in their anonymity, allowing them to fully explore their surroundings and become totally absorbed in the world around them.”

You Me Bum Bum Train is an Interactive theatre performance devised by Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd in 2004. The pair met as art students in Brighton, where they were studying illustration and film. The show gained critical acclaim in the United Kingdom when it was awarded the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust prize while showing in a disused office in London. In 2010 it won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for outstanding newcomer.

Visitors to the performance pass through a series of scenes of which they have no foreknowledge, in which they are either passive or where they must improvise a part without any preparation.

Nowadays we have a vast array of theatres and venues enjoy experimental shows and festivals and in London we are especially spoilt for choice. One of the most atmospheric locations to see a performance is undoubtedly The Vaults, home to immersive theatre and alternative arts (and located right here on Leake Street!).

We chatted with Ami Stidolph, Head of Theatre at The Vaults , to get a better idea of the immersive theatre world today.

How did you get into theatre? I grew up in Chichester, which has a fantastic theatre and a fantastic youth theatre which I loved being a part of. I never really set out to pursue it as a carrer, but I had so much fun doing those shows that I couldn’t keep away.

What’s the best theatre show you’ve seen? Tonnes spring to mind – His Dark Materials at the National, Taking Sides at Chichester, a fringe production of Henry IV I saw in some tiny place one.

What are your favourite types of theatre production? I’m a huge Shakespeare lover, but I work in immersive theatre so I always enjoy seeing something very unusual. I’m a big puppetry fan as well.

Which theatre companies are really pushing the boundaries of theatre? Oof tough as that question could mean so many things, but I’ll always book to see the work of Kill the Beast , Complicite , and DryWrite .

What is the concept behind Vaults theatre? The Vaults theatre is built upon our beautiful space. Stepping in here is an experience and an atmosphere in itself so we bounce off that as a start. We’re neighbours with some fantastic theatres which we don’t want to (and frankly can’t) compete with, so it’s our job to try to offer something genuinely different. Immersive and experiential theatre is really growing and we want to be a huge part of that force.

What’s the best show you’ve seen at Vaults? Oh gosh there’s so many – recently Trainspotting and Red Wolf , which was part of VAULT Festival .

What type of person does immersive theatre appeal to? Interesting question! We try to come at each production individually in terms of who we’re appealing to, as immersive theatre is a broad spectrum. But I suppose our core audience base is often adventurous young adults (20 – 35).

What’s the most insane thing you’ve seen/heard of in the immersive theatre world? Every time I do a show people come up with these ideas and technologies that seem so close to actual magic to me – our next show (Sounds and Sorcery) uses binaural sound technology on wireless headphones so I’m now learning about that. But the madness of it really is you’re asking people to literally step in to a new world, meaning you just can’t work out what the audience will do. They might punch an actor, or drop their trousers and wee in the middle of the show (really) or get so involved they point-blank refuse to leave the set. But those are, weirdly, the great bits, because every show is genuinely different from the last because it is responsive.

What’s the future of theatre? Crikey.  Sadly I don’t have a Charlie-Brooker-esque insight in to what the new trend, or technology, or fad will be, but I hope we can keep being responsive to what people both want and need in their lives and create work around that.  The future of theatre always has been, and always will be, about reflecting what is going on the world, and people, and what people are like and why they’re like that. It’s cheesy but it’s true.

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The Rise of Experimental Theatre

Theatre has always been a space for creativity and experimentation. From Shakespeare’s intricate plays to the contemporary works of Lin-Manuel Miranda, theatre has been an evolving art form that has captured the imagination of audiences for centuries. However, in recent years, a new form of theatre has been on the rise – experimental theatre. In this article, we will explore the techniques used in experimental theatre and the benefits it can bring to both performers and audiences.

Experimental theatre is a form of performance that breaks away from traditional theatrical norms. It is characterized by its use of unconventional techniques, themes, and structures. Experimental theatre often blurs the line between performance and audience, challenging the audience’s expectations and involvement in the performance. It can take on many different forms, from immersive theatre experiences to site-specific performances.

Techniques Used in Experimental Theatre

One of the defining features of experimental theatre is its use of unconventional techniques. Here are some techniques commonly used in experimental theatre:

1. Physical Theatre

Physical theatre is a performance style that emphasizes the body as a means of communication. It can include elements such as dance, mime, and acrobatics. Physical theatre is often used in experimental theatre to explore themes that are difficult to express through traditional dialogue.

2. Improvisation

Improvisation is a technique where performers create a performance on the spot, without a script. Improvisation is often used in experimental theatre to create a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability.

3. Non-linear Narratives

Non-linear narratives are a technique used to tell a story out of order, often with multiple storylines running simultaneously. This technique is used in experimental theatre to challenge the audience’s expectations of a traditional story structure.

4. Audience Participation

Audience participation is a technique used to involve the audience in the performance. It can include elements such as interactive elements, voting, or even allowing audience members to join in the performance. This technique is often used in experimental theatre to create a sense of community and engagement.

Benefits of Experimental Theatre

Experimental theatre can bring many benefits to both performers and audiences. Here are some benefits of experimental theatre:

1. Creativity and Innovation

Experimental theatre allows performers to explore new techniques and ideas, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in theatre. This creativity and innovation can lead to new forms of theatre and storytelling.

2. Audience Engagement

Experimental theatre often challenges the audience’s expectations and involvement in the performance. This engagement can create a more immersive and meaningful theatre experience.

3. Inclusivity

Experimental theatre can be more inclusive than traditional theatre, allowing for a wider range of performers and stories to be told. This inclusivity can lead to more diverse and representative theatre.

Experimental theatre is a growing trend in the theatre world, offering a new and exciting way of exploring the art form. Through its use of unconventional techniques and focus on audience engagement, experimental theatre can challenge both performers and audiences. As theatre continues to evolve, experimental theatre will undoubtedly play an important role in shaping its future.

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Experimental Theater

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During the 1920s, European theater had become too tame and predictable. Bertolt Brecht decided to try new experiments: for example actors would "break the 4th wall" and ask the audience questions. His critique of hypocrisy in church, business, and government caused protests by the rising Nazi movement. Fleeing for America, he worked with director Fritz Lang on a noir film about the assination of Heydrich, chief architect of the Holocaust. Ever since Brecht, experimental theater has been associated with social justice.

During the 1960s, experimental theater was used by groups to aid the civil rights movements. For example, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater performed in both English and Spanish, traveling around the boroughs of New York City to give voice to immigrant families struggling with unfair practices. In the 1970s, theatre practitioner Augusto Boal created a Theater of the Oppressed in Brazil, using techniques similar to Brecht's to turn spectators into "spect-actors" that allowed the audience to explore social transformations.

Today's experimental theater incorporates a wide variety of technology-based special effects, strategies, and techniques. For example, Radio Healer is a Xicana/o and Native American led art collective in Phoenix, Arizona. They describe themselves as “hacker-artists who create Indigenous electronic tools.” They cite examples such as the low-rider chop shop, or the “making do” repairs common to native communities, to show that technology/culture mash-ups are just as much a part of their histories as pow-wows and quinceañeras. Many of their performances reimagine traditional ceremonies as spaces in which the public is invited to reflect on issues such as obsolescence, consumption, border control, and surveillance. On the other side of the Atlantic, historian, writer, and performer Dr. Edson Burton is preparing the first AfroFuturist theater production in Bristol, England: The Last Blues Song of a Lost Afronaut . It will use 3D sound, shadow capture, and digital projection to make alien environments a vivid presence to the audience, and interactive components will using optical and auditory sensors to trigger other effects.

Fritz Lang working on Brecht's movie script.

The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

Radio Healer's unique mix of Indigenous and high tech artifacts.

Set from Edson Burton's immersive play Last Blues Song of a Lost Afronaut

1960’s – Experimental Theatre

The short read For an insight into this work look at Unfinished Histories excellent archive, particularly the Albert Hunt/Bradford Art College Theatre Group .

The long read Andrew Davies’ classic Other Theatres: the Development of Alternative and Experimental Theatre in Britain (Barnes and Noble, 1987) is a great overview of the development of this radical approach.

Immersed in a radical social and political climate, a new wave of artists and theatre makers tired of convention began to experiment with theatrical form.  They broke down the fourth wall , performed in non-traditional spaces, moved away from naturalism , created work collaboratively, experimented with audience participation, made multi-disciplinary performance and often told stories that hadn’t been seen on theatre stages before.  Though radical at the time, these approaches have been so influential that they are considered the norm in participatory theatre performance today.  Contemporary companies like Invisible Flock build on this experimental legacy and continue to break new ground in participatory theatre form, making what they call ‘interactive art’, operating at the cutting edge of art and technology.

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Experimental theatre: Then and now

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Throughout history, directors and playwrights have tried pushing the boundaries of conventional theatre pieces. In the late 19th century, fringe theatre (also known more popularly today as experimental theatre) became a popular movement in Western theatre as a way to reject common notions of society and theatre at the time.

In what’s considered to be the earliest ‘mainstream’ fringe production, French writer Alfred Jarry produced his Ubu Roi play, causing much disturbance from the public as it’s theorized the play’s use of vulgar language led to its outlaw from the stage. The play came at a time of revolutionary importance as French theatre began to shift over into a new territory of modernism. While parts of the play today would seem arbitrary and frivolous, because the director left the majority of the play up to the audience’s interpretation, at the time the symbolism held a deep resonance on the audience and the play itself led to modernism and future experimental theatre to become popularized throughout the world.

Today, experimental theatre has grown as a more accepted form of theatre. In New York City, the popular theatre attraction Sleep No More pushes the audience’s a-typical standards of plays by introducing Shakespeare’s Macbeth almost as if it were an exhibit piece. Requiring the audience to remain silent throughout, audience members are asked to analyze complicated set pieces and follow fast-paced actors running through rooms to understand the story.

Alternative to single productions, progressive theatre groups are found worldwide. Introducing seasons of experimental theatre pieces, these groups generally have a mission to challenge their audiences and critics through expressive theatre that pushes boundaries.

One group in particular, SKaGeN, produces performances in the Belgium and Netherlands area. Founded in 2001, SKaGeN comprises of Valentijn Dhaenens, Korneel Hamers, Mathijs Scheepers and Clara van den Broek. While these people might not be familiar on a name basis, in their homeland SKaGeN has developed into one of the leading Flemish theatre companies of the current generation. Driven by a desire to combine artistic standards and accessibility, the group has produced various acclaimed experimental theatre shows. One in particular that has gained worldwide attention is Valentijn Dhaenens’s Bigmouth .

Comprised of fragments from powerful speeches from Martin Luther King to Osama bin Laden, the one-man powerhouse show features Dhaenens shifting his ton, accent, and even language to convey potency of word’s whispered, shouted, and spoken. This show has received international acclaim from UK’s Guardian newspaper to a sold-out gig at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, one of the largest arts festivals in Scotland.

On January 15th, 2016 at 8:00 PM, Valentijn Dhaenens will perform his universally acclaimed Bigmouth to Pasant Theatre’s stage. Tickets are available at Wharton Center’s box office, whartoncenter.com, or by calling 1-800-WHARTON.

Members of the editorial and news staff of USA TODAY Network were not involved in the creation of this content.

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Power to the People: Experimental Theatre in the 1960s

A number of sub-cultures, all characterised by some form of reaction against the customs and mores which had predominated since the end of the Second World War (and indeed a good deal longer) began to take distinctive shape around the years 1958-59 in all of the Western nations. These sub-cultures expanded, interlinked with, and absorbed, each other, so that by the early 1970s the cultures of the Western nations, and indeed of the West as a whole, had been transformed.

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Experimental theatre  

From the art and popular culture encyclopedia.

Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre ) began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular and, in general, the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical.

Like other forms of the avant-garde , it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois theatre. It tries to introduce a different use of language and the body to change the mode of perception and to create a new, more active relation with the audience.

Relationships to audience

Famed experimental theatre director and playwright Peter Brook describes his task as building "… a necessary theatre, one in which there is only a practical difference between actor and audience, not a fundamental one."

Traditionally audiences are seen as passive observers. Many practitioners of experimental theatre have wanted to challenge this. For example, Bertolt Brecht wanted to mobilise his audiences by having a character in a play break through the invisible "fourth wall," directly ask the audience questions, not giving them answers, thereby getting them to think for themselves; Augusto Boal wanted his audiences to react directly to the action; and Antonin Artaud wanted to affect them directly on a subconscious level. Peter Brook has identified a triangle of relationships within a performance: the performers' internal relationships, the performers' relationships to each other on stage, and their relationship with the audience. The British experimental theatre group Welfare State International has spoken of a ceremonial circle during performance, the cast providing one half, the audience providing another, and the energy in the middle.

Aside from ideological implications of the role of the audience, theatres and performances have addressed or involved the audience in a variety of ways. The proscenium arch has been called into question, with performances venturing into non-theatrical spaces . Audiences have been engaged differently, often as active participants in the action on a highly practical level. When a proscenium arch has been used, its usual use has often been subverted.

Audience participation can range from asking for volunteers to go onstage to having actors scream in audience members' faces. By using audience participation, the performer invites the audience to feel a certain way and by doing so they may change their attitudes, values and beliefs in regard to the performance's topic. For example, in a performance on bullying the character may approach an audience member, size them up and challenge them to a fight on the spot. The terrified look on the audience member's face will strongly embody the message of bullying to the member and the rest of the audience.

Physically, theatre spaces took on different shapes, and practitioners re-explored different ways of staging performance and a lot of research was done into Elizabethan and Greek theatre spaces. This was integrated into the mainstream, the National Theatre in London , for example, has a highly flexible, somewhat Elizabethan traverse space (the Dorfman), a proscenium space (the Lyttelton) and an amphitheatre space (the Olivier) and the directors and architects consciously wanted to break away from the primacy of the proscenium arch. Jacques Copeau was an important figure in terms of stage design, and was very keen to break away from the excesses of naturalism to get to a more pared down, representational way of looking at the stage.

Social contexts

The increase of the production of experimental theaters during the 1950s through the 1960s has prompted some to cite the connection between theater groups and the socio-political contexts in which they operated. Some groups have been prominent in changing the social face of theatre, rather than its stylistic appearance. Performers have used their skills to engage in a form of cultural activism. This may be in the form of didactic agit-prop theatre, or some (such as Welfare State International ) see a performance environment as being one in which a micro-society can emerge and can lead a way of life alternative to that of the broader society in which they are placed. For instance, in a study of South American theatrical developments during the 1960s, the Nuevo Teatro Popular materialized amid the change and innovations entailed in the social and political developments of the period. This theatrical initiative was organized around groups or collective driven by specific events and performed themes tied to class and cultural identity that empowered their audience and help create movements that spanned national and cultural borders. These included Utopian projects, which sought to reconstruct social and cultural production, including their objectives.

Augusto Boal used the Legislative Theatre on the people of Rio to find out what they wanted to change about their community, and he used the audience reaction to change legislation in his role as a councillor. In the United States, the tumultuous 1960s saw experimental theater emerging as a reaction to the state's policies on issues like nuclear armament, racial social injustice, homophobia, sexism and military-industrial complex. The mainstream theater was increasingly seen from as a purveyor of lies, hence, theatrical performances were often seen as a means to expose what is real and this entails a focus on hypocrisy, inequality, discrimination, and repression. This is demonstrated in the case of Grotowski , who rejected the lies and contradictions of mainstream theater and pushed for what he called as truthful acting in the performances of his Poor Theater as well as his lectures and workshops.

Experimental theatre encourages directors to make society, or our audience at least, change their attitudes, values, and beliefs on an issue and to do something about it. The distinction was explained in the conceptualization of experimentation that "goes much deeper and much beyond than merely a new form/or novel content" but "a light that illuminates one's work from within. And this light in the spirit of quest - not only aesthetic quest - it is an amalgam of so many quests - intellectual, aesthetic, but most of all, spiritual quest."

Methods of creation

Traditionally, there is a highly hierarchical method of creating theatre - a writer identifies a problem, a writer writes a script, a director interprets it for the stage together with the actors, the performers perform the director and writers collective vision. Various practitioners started challenging this and started seeing the performers more and more as creative artists in their own right. This started with giving them more and more interpretive freedom and devised theatre eventually emerged. This direction was aided by the advent of ensemble improvisational theater, as part of the experimental theatre movement, which did not need a writer to develop the material for a show or "theater piece." In this form the lines were devised by the actors or performers.

Within this many different structures and possibilities exist for performance makers, and a large variety of different models are used by performers today. The primacy of the director and writer has been challenged directly, and the directors role can exist as an outside eye or a facilitator rather than the supreme authority figure they once would have been able to assume.

As well as hierarchies being challenged, performers have been challenging their individual roles. An inter-disciplinary approach becomes more and more common as performers have become less willing to be shoe-horned into specialist technical roles. Simultaneous to this, other disciplines have started breaking down their barriers. Dance , music , visual art and writing become blurred in many cases, and artists with completely separate trainings and backgrounds collaborate very comfortably.

Physical effects

Experimental theatre alters traditional conventions of space ( black box theater ), theme, movement, mood, tension, language, symbolism, conventional rules and other elements.

Key figures

Template:Prose

• Antonin Artaud (Theatre of Cruelty)
• Eugenio Barba
• Julian Beck
• Samuel Beckett
• Carmelo Bene
• Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed)
• Giannina Braschi
• Bertolt Brecht (Epic Theatre)
• Peter Brook
• Roberto Castello
• Joseph Chaikin
• Robert Cohen (Transversal Theater Company)
• Jacques Copeau
• Richard Foreman
• Joel Gersmann
• Andre Gregory
• Jerzy Grotowski (Poor Theatre)
• Peter Handke
• Sophie Hunter
• Eugene Ionesco
• Young Jean Lee
• Isabelle Junot
• Tadeusz Kantor
• Adrienne Kennedy
• Jan Lauwers (Needcompany)'
• Elizabeth LeCompte '
• Dimitris Lyacos
• Judith Malina
• Caden Manson "(Real Time Film)"
• Richard Maxwell
• Vsevolod Meyerhold (Biomechanics)
• Ariane Mnouchkine
• J.L. Moreno
• Heiner Müller
• Jemma Nelson
• Annie-B Parson
• Suzan-Lori Parks
• Luigi Pirandello
• Sreejith Ramanan
• Bryan Reynolds (Transversal Theater Company)
• Marttah Viktoria Robles (Pecatta Capitalia)
• Carl Hancock Rux
• Supriyo Samajdar (Bibhaban - experimental theatre)
• Richard Schechner
• Viola Spolin
• Ellen Stewart
• Giorgio Strehler
• Tadashi Suzuki
• Cynthia Tribalo
• Jean Pierre Voos
• Mac Wellman
• Robert Wilson
• Vahram Zaryan
• Maria Kassiani Panoutsou (Actress- Director)

List of experimental theater groups

• Alternative Living Theatre
• Kalakshetra,Manipur
• Experimental Theater (NCPA)
• Curtain Call Productions (Hyderabad)
• The Lord Chamberlain's Men
• Orchesterated Q'works

United Kingdom

• Reckless Sleepers
• Forced Entertainment
• Welfare State International
• The Danuki Ensemble
• Proto-type Theater
• Third Angel
• Stan's Cafe
• Lone Twin Theatre
• People Show
• Gob Squad (Anglo-German)
• Desperate Optimists
• The Kadozuke Kollektif
• The Ensemble Project Canada
• Suburban Beast
• Theatre Encounter
• Vault Projects
• The Irondale Ensemble Project Canada
• DNA Theatre
• Small Wooden Shoe
• Swallow A Bicycle
• Theatre Replacement
• Leaky Heaven
• One Yellow Rabbit
• Boca del Lupo
• Mammalian Diving Reflex
• Electric Company Theatre
• bluemouth inc.
• Zuppa Theatre Co.
• The Chop Theatre
• Radix Theatre
• Rumble Productions
• Ruby Slippers
• Catalyst Theatre
• Battery Opera
• Productions Recto-Verso

United States

• Double Edge Theatre
• The Satori Group (Seattle)
• Big Art Group
• Bread and Puppet Theater
• Broom Street Theater
• Cangue League
• Cock and Bull Theatre (Chicago)
• Neo-Futurists
• Elevator Repair Service
• Great Jones Repertory Company at La MaMa, E.T.C.
• Fordham Experimental Theatre
• Ashes Company (New York)
• The Living Theatre
• Mabou Mines
• Margolis Brown Adaptors Company (New York)
• Monk Parrots
• The Open Theater
• Ontological-Hysteric Theater
• Playhouse of the Ridiculous
• Squat Theatre
• The Tantalus Theatre Group
• The Wooster Group
• Andy's Summer Playhouse (New Hampshire)
• The Changing Scene (Colorado)
• Provincetown Players
• Magic Theatre (Omaha)
• Skewed Visions (Minneapolis)
• Performance Space 122 (New York)
• Corner Theatre ETC (Baltimore)
• Theater Mitu
• Young Jean Lee 's Theater Company
• The National Theater of The United States of America
• Big Dance Theater
• Nature Theater of Oklahoma
• Bedlam Theatre (Edinburgh, not Minneapolis)
• Core Theatre Ensemble (Hampton Roads, VA)
• The Irondale Ensemble Project NYC
• The Rude Mechanicals
• Bridge Street Theatre

Australia and New Zealand

• The Sydney Front
• TropicSun Theatre
• Free Theatre Christchurch
• Binge Culture
• kalakshetra, Manipur
• Bibhaban-The Experimental Theatre Company
• Fanny & Alexander
• Opera (Vincenzo Schino)
• Ricci/Forte
• Societas Raffaello Sanzio
• Teatrino Clandestino
• Teatro Valdoca

Netherlands

• Transversal Theater Company
• Needcompany
• Marttah Viktoria Robles
• Denise Stoklos
• Performance art
• Physical theatre
• Postdramatic theatre
• Experimental theatre in the Arab world
• Fringe theatre
• Antonin Artaud ( Theatre of Cruelty )
• Jean Cocteau
• Elizabeth LeCompte

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Experimental Theatre or Trying Something New

Looking through the history of theatre, we can find many and various ways of making theatre and plays. Traditionally, there is a hierarchical method of creating theatre – a writer writes a script, a director interprets it for the stage, and the performers perform.

Practitioners started changing this and started seeing the performers as creative artists, and giving them more interpretive and creative freedom.

In Western theatre, in the late 19th century, appears a number of various theatrical styles and movements, known as Experimental theatre.

Here we can mention the Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. At that time, the acceptable conventions were pretty narrow and leaned towards naturalism, which strives to reality in the style of acting. Experimental theatre means trying something new.

The experimental is term that changed over time as the mainstream theatre and the world has adopted many forms that were considered as radical. It is used interchangeably with the term avant-garde theatre. Like other forms of the avant-garde, it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Beside different political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois theatre. They have been coined for the sake of critical convenience, critics are confronted by theatre which is not a “real” play (not based in text), they see it as foreign to tradition that it must be defined as “experiment”.

This term been used since the middle of the twentieth century with many other terms: “event” or “Happening” in the 1950s; “multimedia” in the 1960s; “visual theatre” in the 1970s; Performance Art in the 1980s; Live Art in the 1990s.

It introduces a different use of language and the body, and tries to change the perception on the theatre and plays and to create a new, active relation with the audience.

Theatres and performances are trying to involve the audience in a variety of ways, as active participants. Audience participation can range from asking for volunteers to go onstage to having actors scream in audience members’ faces, the performer invites the audience to feel a certain way.

Theatre spaces took on different shapes, and practitioners re-explored different ways of staging performance and a lot of research was done into Elizabethan and Greek theatre spaces, sometimes it was integrated into the mainstream theatre. Experimental theatre and participants wanted to change their community, and to used the audience reaction to change some attitudes, values and beliefs.

Some groups changed the social face of theatre, performers used their skills to engage in a cultural activism. Performance environment became a micro-society that can lead a way of life alternative to that the broader society. Experimental theatre alters traditional conventions of space, movement, mood, tension, language, symbolism, and other elements.

Today, theatre many different structures and possibilities for performance makers, and a variety of different models used by performers. The primacy of the director and writer has been challenged, and the directors’ role can exist as an outside eye rather than the supreme authority figure.

Performers have been challenging their individual roles, an inter-disciplinary approach becomes more and more common as performers have become less willing to be shoe-horned into specialist technical roles. Other disciplines have started breaking down their barriers and stage became open for many of them  as  dance, music, visual art and writing , and artists with completely backgrounds collaborate.

Experimental theatre is practiced and today in 21 century and there are many artist all over the world that are looking for new forms and methods of expression true the experimental theatre and they show there plays, art works and performances in many international festivals, and some of them are: Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Cairo International festival for Experimental Theatre, Shanghai International Experimental Theatre Festival, MAN.In.FEST – International Festival of Experimental Theatre, Spill experimental theatre festival at Time Out London and many other.

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Experimental theatre in the twentieth century: avant-gardism, the absurd, and the postmodern

• Published: 30 April 2014
• Volume 42 , pages 341–358, ( 2015 )

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Modern drama is still patently viewed as moving from the realistic Ibsen and the naturalistic Strindberg to the socially, politically, and psychologically oriented "problem plays" of the twentieth century (and beyond), fed occasionally by assorted "techniques" from aberrant avant-garde movements. This essay, agrues, by contrast, for a revisionist history of modern drama that would acknowledge the innovative and visionary contributions of "modernism," as linked to the historical and literary avant-garde, be it in the form of expressionism, symbolism, futurism, dada, or surrealism. From the inception of the absurd, moreover, avant-garde drama has certainly not ceased to proliferate. Yet in the late 1960s we entered the era of postmodernism, in which two events occurred to halt the "advance" of avant-garde drama. The first is the embrace by postmodern playwrights of a stylistic pluralism, an eclectic and often selfreflexive interweaving of different styles drawn from different time periods. The second is the deification of postmodern performance through the merging of author and director into a single "superstar." The most significant efforts of the avant-garde do continue to involve the self-conscious exploration of the nature, limits, and possibilities of drama and theater in contemporary society; but the vision of and for the future manifest in such work remains tentative and unclear, it is as though the avant-garde could not overcome the doubt and distrust foisted upon its potential for inspired vision.

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Cardullo, R. Experimental theatre in the twentieth century: avant-gardism, the absurd, and the postmodern. Neohelicon 42 , 341–358 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-013-0215-8

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Computation, theatre scholarship, and distant reading, close reading 3,051 sentences, who makes experimental work, the shifting geographies of experimental work, the people and places of experimental theatre scholarship: a computational overview.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2023

The “experimental” playwrights of continental Europe have been experimental not because they have imitated modern literature or poetry, but because they have sought to express themselves in theatrical terms, and the great directors, like Jouvet, Barrault, Viertel, and Brecht have been there to make their plays “exist” on the stage.

Considering the institutional frames of Sighing , Tian Mansha's production is a star-centred experimental xiqu work.

Sixty years separate these two sentences—yet both are statements found in a dataset about experimental theatre. The first one references playwrights and directors in Europe. The article from which it is taken compares the situation in Europe to that in the United States (which Hoffman, a legendary director-educator then based in New York, refers to as “our theatre”). The second sentence talks about Sighing, an experimental adaptation of 戏曲 ( xiqu, Chinese opera) by Tian Mansha, one of the most internationally renowned Sichuan opera performers at the time of writing. These two sentences are, respectively, one of the oldest and one of the most recent entries in a dataset of sentences about experimental theatre. The first mentions four men and deals with a Euro-American genealogy of experimental theatre. The second mentions a woman, and explores the meanings of experimental performance in Mainland China and Taiwan. These two sentences are indicative of a larger trend: the progressive diversification of the people and places mentioned in the scholarship on experimental performance. As we might expect, increasingly more women and more places outside of Europe and North America were mentioned in six decades worth of academic articles. However, drilling into the data shows that this story is more complicated. Women became increasingly associated with experimental performance over time, but for almost every year on record, more than half the people in this dataset were still men. In contrast, a diversification of the places started much sooner and increased at a faster pace: as the results below show, in the twenty-first century the vast majority of places mentioned in connection to experimental performance were located outside Europe and North America. Data add nuance and precision to our impressions. If we believe that the diversification of the people and places of theatre scholarship matters, data make important contributions to our methodological palette.

This paper's conclusions are based on a large dataset of theatre scholarship that was analyzed with the help of computational tools. Despite the relative newness of its methods, this project continues a scholarly tradition interested in historicizing how experimental theatre is conceptualized and discussed. Perhaps the most influential example of this tradition is James Harding's The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) , which chronicles the ways in which scholars have emphasized and downplayed different accents of meaning of the term “avant-garde.” Footnote 3 Harding writes that “to speak of the avant-gardes necessitates speaking of how the avant-gardes have been received and conceptualized in cultural criticism.” Footnote 4 Harding's book-length history requires a nimble analytical disposition capable of tracing changing contexts and meanings. In comparison, my brief piece of data history focuses on the who and where of experimental theatre scholarship. Histories such as Harding's use the terms “avant-garde(s)” and “experimental” somewhat interchangeably, and focus predominantly on a Euro-American context. The present overview is more expansive in its scope inasmuch as it considers the entire corpus of sentences about experimental work written in theatre research articles, but the price I pay for this expansion is a razor-thin focus on a single term, which necessarily leaves many things out.

All scholarship entails trade-offs of selection and omission, and I hope to convince readers that the conclusions that follow are worth the limitations imposed by computational research. As Debra Caplan notes, “data-driven theatre history, at its best, can reveal previously invisible patterns.” Footnote 5 The patterns I find here are perhaps not wholly invisible, but without data they are blurred and imprecise. Bringing them into sharp relief does not displace other modes of knowing, but suggests novel questions that might in turn be explored by close reading and traditional historiographic methods. Sarah Bay-Cheng notes that digital tools change the practice of historiography, enabling an interactive, performative way of interrogating the past. Footnote 6 This applies not only to the records of performance, but also to our own scholarship. For this research project, I created a new command line interface to help me reimagine the records of theatre scholarship interactively. Below, I give a nontechnical overview of this method and highlight the interpretive moves that underpin my approach.

When Debra Caplan wrote the influential “Notes from the Frontier: Digital Scholarship and the Future of Theatre Studies” in 2015, she dedicated substantial attention to justifying the importance of digital methods for theatre. Footnote 7 In the span of just a few years, her predictions have come true, and the work she describes has increasingly moved from the frontier to the center. Theatre Journal has dedicated two entire issues to digital theatre scholarship, book-length studies of theatre and digital humanities have been published, a working group dedicated to digital research meets regularly at IFTR, and ATHE gives an annual award for digital scholarship. Footnote 8 Among other things, theatre scholars have used digital methods to study changes in the lengths of production runs, patterns of collaborations among artists, and the cultural transmission of influential playscripts. Footnote 9

The digital humanities are an even more mature field in literary studies, and several influential monographs have been published in recent years. Footnote 10 Literary scholars have also used digital methods to study their fields scholarly production. Andrew Piper's Can We Be Wrong? Textual Evidence in a Time of Data analyzes the prevalence of “generalization” in literary scholarship using machine learning. Footnote 11 To the best of my knowledge, theatre scholars have yet to take advantage of such approaches to study our vast scholarly record. However, focusing on scholarship itself as an important object of study is an uncontroversial research strategy. Take, for example, Shannon Jackson's monumental Professing Performance , which takes scholarship as primary evidence for reconstructing the intellectual history of performance studies across various institutional contexts. Footnote 12

Computational tools enable us to ask these questions at a different scale and afford a level of systematicity that is useful for certain types of question. For example, digital methods have been shown to be especially important when studying representation and diversity. Deb Verhoeven and collaborators have used network analysis to identify structural causes that prevent women from occupying leading creative roles in the film industry. Footnote 13 Counting Together ( https://countingtogether.org/ ) is a database that collects statistics on race, gender, and disability in American theatre. Richard Jean So's Redlining Culture uses a host of computational tools to study racial and gender diversity in postwar American literature. Footnote 14

For this article, I participate in a form of “distant reading” that requires computer-assisted manual classification. As Ted Underwood notes, distant reading encompasses a wide range of activities that may not necessarily be explicitly computational. Footnote 15 Some forms of distant reading could be described as systematic reading, such as Underwood's own analysis of literary time. Footnote 16 In one article, he used digital tools to visualize the data, but the dataset itself was the product of human annotation. This type of work has long roots in the social sciences, where such “qualitative analysis” is often aided by specialized software such as NVivo and ATLAS.ti. The objective of software such as these is to help researchers systematically annotate or classify portions of text (typically from interviews, but also from media reports and other sources). I call the approach I use here “data-assisted” research, a term I have defined more extensively elsewhere, and which I contrast to “data-driven” methodologies. Footnote 17 In data-driven methodologies , data are used to answer specific questions. Researchers create a formal representation of a question and automate a sequence of procedures to provide an answer. The criteria for evaluation are defined beforehand, and the answer is measured against these criteria. In data-assisted methodologies , in contrast, researchers use data to transform their view of a problem. In these approaches, the purpose of framing a theatrical event as data is not to offer a clear answer but to augment our capacity to think about such an event. Data, in other words, provide a good defamiliarization strategy.

Many recent digital humanities projects use computational methods that rely heavily on machine learning techniques. Footnote 18 Though the promise of such computational work is doubtless exciting, computer-aided qualitative text analysis also holds great promise. The latter approach is particularly useful for relatively small datasets (e.g., thousands of datapoints) and for messy data where automation is difficult and a human observer can classify data in ways that are faster or more accurate.

The present study fits both of these conditions. I developed a custom piece of software that allowed me to tag and classify Named Entities (people, places, and companies; hereinafter NEs) semiautomatically within a few thousand sentences. My custom program displayed each sentence individually, in chronological order, and highlighted a number of potential NEs, which I then verified manually. Verification was necessary because some of the potential NEs were false positives, and some NEs were not initially captured. At a second stage, I classified each verified NE according to different categories, as I explain later.

Manual annotation is at the heart of this data-assisted approach, in ways that differ from those of other researchers in the computational humanities, who are interested in developing fully automatic solutions to classification problems. However, it must be noted that even “fully automatic” solutions require human annotators manually to tag a subset of the data, which can be used to draw more generalizable inferences using machine learning (ML). Typically, these systems take a long time to train (the technical term for fitting a model to a portion of the data) and validate, and even the most robust models are never 100 percent accurate, and they can consume large amounts of computational resources. Footnote 19 Larger datasets justify the effort and resources needed to train and deploy such models. But in my case, I had a reasonably “small” dataset that did not, in my opinion, justify the trade-offs required by ML. Thus, I chose to use my time and energy to tag and verify each datapoint manually. That being said, my methods are still computational inasmuch as they are enabled by a custom piece of software that aimed to make my tagging and validation process as fast and reliable as possible.

My custom software was built using the Python programming language and a host of open-source libraries. Footnote 20 The program added my manual tagging decisions to a dataset, and new entries were verified against this dataset to ensure consistency and to increase the accuracy of potential NEs in subsequent sentences (see the screenshot in Fig. 1 ). To display the sentences and the potential NEs I relied on an interactive command line interface (CLI). CLIs might seem arcane or difficult, but they afford enormous flexibility and ease of use. Developing these interfaces is very straightforward, especially when compared to graphic user interfaces with buttons and other features. They require relatively little time to code, and allow a researcher to make changes constantly.

Figure 1. Screenshot of the custom Command Line Interface (CLI) developed for this research project.

When manually revising a dataset of this size (fewer than three thousand items), I find it easier to use the keyboard and a combination of keys for operations that I have to repeat over and over. This adds flexibility, reduces frustration, and ensures higher quality. I used the Rich library to add color to the interface (typically CLIs are black and white) so that potential NEs and NEs already in a dataset could be displayed in different colors. Rather than merely an aesthetic decision, I find that this keeps me alert when doing repetitive work and helps minimize errors. The interface also displayed the current rate of progress—this was important for minimizing frustration, an important consideration given that tagging the NEs took several weeks. Minimizing frustration and ensuring quality and ease of use are fundamental for this type of computationally enabled, systematic reading of thousands of instances. Footnote 21

Software such as the one I built for this project can be thought of as computational assistants, simple programs tailored for specific research objectives rather than full-fledged pieces of software ready to be used in multiple situations. For the reasons given above, I think it makes sense for researchers invested in the systematic manual analysis of thousands of items to develop their own custom software. Out-of-the box solutions for this type of work exist, and they are typically used for manually annotating interviews and other textual records by researchers in the social sciences (such as NVivo and Atlas.ti, as noted earlier). But one distinction between these software packages and my custom-built program is that my solution uses bespoke computational components to learn from my choices and update itself according to parameters within my control. I also find the ability to fully customize shortcuts and the distraction-free environments of CLIs justification enough to develop this type of software.

This study relied on data from Constellate, a portal for textual analytics from JSTOR and Portico. Using this service, I constructed a dataset that includes the metadata and unigram counts (the frequency of single words) for all articles of the following theatre journals: Tulane Drama Review, TDR/The Drama Review, Theatre Research International, PAJ/Performing Arts Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Theatre Topics, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, and Modern Drama. Originally, I also included articles from Educational Theatre Journal (the predecessor of Theatre Journal ). However, the online archive for this journal is patchy, as many extant articles for the early years are not research articles but progress on doctoral dissertations or items such as “don'ts for theatre builders”—hence the data for this journal were discarded.

The metadata for the articles include information such as the author, document type, name of the journal, number of pages, date of publication, a unique identifier, and the title of the article. The initial dataset comprised 19,661 titles. Constellate collections are very comprehensive, but some articles are duplicated as they are part of both the JSTOR and the Portico collections. Some journals are covered exclusively by one database, but there is significant overlap, so this required an additional step of deduplication (the technical term for removing duplicates). A complicating factor is that at times the titles are not exact matches, as sometimes a subtitle is missing, markup information (i.e., HTML codes for italics) is present in only one of the datasets, and some non-Latin characters are incorrectly displayed in the Portico dataset (the JSTOR dataset has gone through additional layers of cleaning and is more reliable). Identifying and removing near-duplicates is called fuzzy deduplication, and it is an important part of many data projects. Footnote 22

In order to carry out this process, I created another custom Python script using Pandas (a general purpose library for data science) and FuzzyWuzzy (a library to detect similar strings of texts). If two titles were from the same year and the similarity between them was above a 90% threshold, the script kept only the title in JSTOR (the preferred version). If both versions were from Portico, it kept the one that did not include markup, which was not important for the present research. In order to ensure maximum data quality, I manually verified every flagged title before removal, also using a CLI as the one described earlier.

The Constellate metadata are very comprehensive but not error-free: not all items with the document type of “article” are actual articles. Many of the retrieved documents are letters to the editor, front and back matter, and book reviews. Using another custom script, I removed all “articles” that actually belonged to these categories by relying on regular expressions. A regular expression or regex is a sequence of textual symbols that specifies a search pattern. For example, I looked for titles that included patterns such as “Letter to” or “Letters to,” and manually verified each matching title before removing it from the dataset. After removing such items and keeping only confirmed academic articles, the final dataset comprised 8,938 articles, spanning sixty-three years between 1958 and 2020.

For these articles, I then inspected the unigram (single-word) counts. I counted the number of articles that included the word “experimental” at least once, and divided this number by the total number of articles for a given year. The resulting ratio is the percentage of articles in any given year that includes the word “experimental” at least once. Figure 2 shows this percentage for every year as a bar, as well as the centered, five-year moving average as an overlaid solid line.

Figure 2. Percentage of articles per year that include the word “experimental” at least once. The bars indicate the raw percentage. Note: In this and other figures, the lines always depict a five-year, centered moving average, and thus always end in 2018 (the last year for which this can be calculated, as the dataset ends in 2020).

This visualization indicates a clear, if slightly subtle upward trend that peaks at around 25 percent in the 2000s and 2010s. There is a surprising dip in the 1970s, but overall increasingly more articles include the word “experimental” over time. How meaningful is this pattern in the context of theatre scholarship? To answer this question, I also calculated the percentages of three other terms: “contemporary,” “modern,” and “avant-garde*” (the asterisk denoting that I combined searches for “avant-garde” and “vanguard,” two terms that are often used interchangeably). Figure 3 presents the five-year, centered moving average for each of these terms. This visualization shows that the trend of “avant-garde*” is similar to that of “experimental” until the 1990s, at which point it starts becoming less common. In contrast, “modern” and “contemporary” are always disproportionally more common than “experimental.” “Contemporary” continues in an upward trend into the late 2010s, whereas the frequency of “modern” starts to decay in the late 2010s. Both terms also dip in the 1970s—note that these percentages are adjusted for the total number of articles in any given year, so they cannot be explained away by decreases or increases in that total. The pattern for “experimental” looks less dramatic in this comparison than it did in Figure 2 . We can say that, although there is a slight upward trend, the usage of “experimental” remains reasonably consistent when placed against the backdrop of other terms with more dramatic changes over time.

Figure 3. Percentage of articles per year that include the words “contemporary,” “modern,” “avant-garde*,” and “experimental” at least once. The lines indicate the five-year, centered moving average.

Given the trend described above, another question arises: Are the mentions of “experimental” consistent across the various journals? Figure 4 shows the arithmetic mean and standard deviation for the percentage of articles that include the word “experimental” across the different journals. There is some variation, from over 10 percent to 25 percent in the arithmetic means of the journals. Note that PAJ and Performing Arts Journal are treated as separate journals, even if there is a historical continuity between them. However, the mean and standard deviation of both journals is not substantially different, and jointly they include a larger percentage of articles with “experimental” than any other journal.

Figure 4. Percentages of yearly articles with the word “experimental” per journal. The gray bars indicate the arithmetic mean values, and the solid darker lines indicate the standard deviation. On the vertical axis, the journals are ordered by the arithmetic mean, from smaller (top) to larger (bottom).

Besides analyzing the data above, which are directly accessible from the Constellate portal, I made an additional data request directly to the Constellate team, and they kindly provided me with a dataset of every sentence that uses the word “experimental” from all the theatre journals mentioned above. (They used the Python NLTK package to segment the articles into sentences.) The dataset included all sentences and unique identifiers, and I used these to remove all items that were discarded from the original dataset (duplicates and items that were not academic articles, as noted above).

After deduplication, the final dataset comprised 3,051 sentences. I then close-read each of these sentences and used the custom-built Python CLI described earlier to tag people, places, and theatre companies or collectives mentioned in those sentences semiautomatically. The identification of people, places, and companies in this manner is called Named Entity Recognition (NER). Many research projects, including some in digital humanities, often rely on automatic NER. Footnote 23 This works better for some fields than others—for example, identifying names of US politicians in news articles typically yields high accuracy. Footnote 24

I could have relied entirely on an automatic system for NER and estimated its accuracy (e.g., by manually tagging a random subset of the sentences and comparing it with the results of automatic NER in the same subset). I could then use this to estimate false positives and false negatives in the NER. I could determine that a result above a certain threshold (say, 80%? or 90%?) is acceptable. However, given that my dataset is still reasonably small and within a scale where manual inspection is possible (if labor-intensive), I decided to take a different approach. I used an automatic NER system (using the library spaCy) to flag potential NEs in each sentence and then manually verified each flagged named entity. Besides increasing accuracy, there is another important reason why I preferred this semiautomatic approach: I wanted to ensure that only NEs directly described in connection to experimental art were included. To this end, I first discarded sentences that referred to experimental science or experimental medical treatments (and there were more such sentences that I had previously imagined). Given the extensive references to other art forms, I decided to keep references not only to performance but also to literature, music, and film. If I had not read at least a subset of the sentences closely, I might have missed this characteristic of the dataset.

Second, I made a conscious decision to extract NEs only in the portion of a sentence that is about experimental art. Sometimes many people and places are described in the space of a single sentence, and I kept only those places and people directly and explicitly described as experimental. Consider this sentence in an article by Guillermo Gómez-Peña as an example:

The four-day Arty-Gras included art workshops for children, poetry readings, experimental video at Larry's Giant Sub Shop, performances by the Emperor Oko Nono and the Georgia Independent Wrestling Alliance, the Oakhill Middle School Band, the Haramee African Dance Troupe, Double Edge Dance and Music, and the Baldwin High School Concert Choir, and an exhibition by Chicano artist Robert Sanchez. Footnote 25

While many places, people and companies are mentioned here, only video is described as experimental. The only relevant NE is Larry's Giant Sub Shop. However, as I explain below, I was interested only in specific references to cities, countries, regions, and continents. I could have searched for the specific location of the Larry's Sub Shop under consideration, but I did not pursue this level of specificity. Gómez-Peña could have written this sentence in a way that explicitly stated the name of a city (say, Palm Beach Gardens, FL). In that case, I would have included the city as a NE. There is, in other words, some level of “noise” in the data. Ultimately, I am making claims about what scholars have written, not about the geographies of experimental theatre as such . In the same vein, it is important to note that I am reworking these sentences into data, for a purpose very different from their intended objective. Most likely, when writing these words, Gómez-Peña never imagined that someone would be using his sentence in the way I am doing now. In explaining this limitation, I seek full methodological transparency so that readers of this article can determine whether my approach is reasonable and useful—and so that other people interested in verifying or expanding my results can follow different paths in subsequent data projects.

In spite of the limitations, I show that the data reveal fascinating trends about who is said to be making experimental work. But reaching these conclusions required additional layers of data cleaning and classification. In the sentences, people are often referred to by their last names. In cases where this happened—and where I could not determine the social identity of the person from the context—I read longer portions of the articles, and often additional sources, in order to ascertain the social identity of the person under consideration.

When evaluating potential people's names in the sentences, I chose only people who were described as artists and producers, rather than scholars whose ideas on experimental theatre were reported in the text. My focus was on the people involved in the creation of experimental art and performances, rather than on those who have theorized experimental theatre (which is also an interesting, but separate question). This means that I discarded Schechner when he was mentioned as a theorist, but not when he was described as an experimental director.

To calculate gender ratios, I included both proper names and pronouns. In some sentences people are described only by pronouns, and in those cases I used this pronoun information as proxy for gender. For proper names, I manually assigned each person to a social gender identity after individually researching each name. Sometimes people are referred to only by their last names, so I standardized all names after the initial process of semiautomated tagging. For this purpose, I again used FuzzyWuzzy to detect similar entities. In this case, the program matched partial ratios , when a string of text was identified within another string of text. This flagged “LeCompte,” “Elizabeth LeCompte,” and “Liz LeCompte” as potential matches. I manually verified every potential match before conflating them into a single standardized named entity and choosing a “canonical” name (“Elizabeth LeCompte” in the example above). Table 1 shows the ten women and men most often mentioned in the sentences. Figure 5 visualizes the ratio of women over time, both as raw percentages and as a five-year, centered moving average. This graph shows a steady increase in the percentage of women mentioned in connection to experimental work, with two “local peaks” in the 1980s and early 2000s. Shockingly, the percentage of women in the first two years was zero, and the percentage for any given year exceeded 50 percent only on two occasions.

Figure 5. Percentage of women mentioned in sentences with the word “experimental.” The data combine proper nouns and pronouns. The bar plots indicate the raw percentages, and the solid line is the five-year, centered moving average.

Table 1. The ten women and men most often mentioned in the sentences

The gender imbalance is striking if not totally surprising. Footnote 26 It must be noted that the binary approach to gender would be woefully inappropriate for other types of question. Gender is a textured and complex category whose construction is the subject of intense academic and artistic attention, especially in experimental theatre. Why then, still classify gender in this way? As scholars, we can be committed both to a textured understanding of gender, and also to highlighting imbalances in the representation of women in art and academia. Footnote 27 When identifying the social identity of each person, I manually sought out information on each of them (as noted above, this often meant extensive additional research). I followed each person's explicit statements of their gender identity when this information was available in an attempt to avoid misgendering a person—but this was harder to do with historical data and for artists for whom little information is known. This caveat should be taken into account when evaluating this type of research. Gender is not the only contested term that computational approaches aim to model in a way that reduces the complexity of a phenomenon—race is another such term. That being said, sometimes reducing the complexity of a term for the purpose of data representation reveals important imbalances. An excellent example comes from Redlining Culture by Richard Jean So, a data history of publishing in the United States that reveals the overwhelming extent to which people of color are underrepresented in book publishing. As So notes, “quantification always means losing something; thinking about race with numbers risks reduction and reification,” but it can also enable detailed follow-up studies and reveal patterns that are easy to miss when we focus only on individual examples. Footnote 28 The same attitude guides the present investigation—a desire for precision, tempered by a recognition of the importance of nuance. This type of work encourages, rather than forecloses, more detailed attention at a different scale of analysis (individual works and careers), but also helps to reveal important patterns and omissions at the level afforded by data.

One limitation of focusing on individual people is that often the sentences do not discuss only single artists and producers, but also companies and collectives. As noted above, I also tracked mentions of theatre companies. As with peoples’ names, sometimes the same company can be referred to in multiple ways (e.g., “The Living” is sometimes a shorthand reference to “The Living Theatre”). For this reason, I applied the same type of verification and named entity resolution described above in connection to peoples’ names to the company data. Figure 6 shows the top ten most common companies and collectives mentioned in the sentences, and their distribution over time.

Figure 6. A bubble chart with the ten most common companies and collectives mentioned in the sentences. The horizontal axis shows the year of the mention. The diameter of the circles shows the comparative number of mentions in that given year. The companies/collectives are arranged in the vertical axis from the most common (top) to the tenth-most common (bottom).

The Women's Experimental Theatre, The Wooster Group, and Mabou Mines were all lead by women (and women have played crucial roles in others, such as The Living Theatre). But perhaps not surprisingly, the women associated with these companies are also the ones with the highest mentions in Table 1 (Sondra Segal, Roberta Sklar, Elizabeth LeCompte, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Judith Malina). We also see that two of the companies are outside of Europe/North America: Teatro de Ensayo (Chile) and Teatro Experimental de Cali (Colombia). However, looking at the distribution of the mentions over time shows that this is due to distinct bursts rather than continuous referencing. It is to this topic—the presence of artists and groups outside Europe and North America—to which I now turn.

For named places, I identified cities, provinces, countries, continents, and larger cultural regions (e.g., Latin America). In a second stage, I classified each of these toponyms as being either located in Europe and North America, or outside these regions. I did not include theatre venues, even though some (e.g., LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club) have been central to the history of experimental work, and terms such as Broadway, which refer to specific geographies. Figure 7 shows the percentage of places that are outside of Europe and North America in sentences with the word “experimental.” As before, this includes raw counts and the five-year, centered moving average.

Figure 7. Percentage of places that are outside of Europe and North America in sentences with the word “experimental.” The bar plots indicate the raw percentages, and the solid line is the five-year, centered moving average.

The distinction between Europe/North America and “elsewhere” elides important differences (e.g., between Western and Eastern Europe), but, as in the case of gender, it helps shed light on histories of imbalance and change. As in the case of gender, this is a story of increased representation (see Fig. 7 ). Yet here, there were no mentions of any place outside Europe and North America before 1970—the first twelve years in the data. However, the increase in the presence of places outside Europe and North America is dramatic, with many years far exceeding 50 percent of all mentions, and becoming the norm in the last part of the 2010s. This steady increase could be due to the addition of journals to the dataset over time, as perhaps more recent journals had a more international orientation. To explore this alternative hypothesis, I plotted mentions of places outside Europe and North America in the Tulane Drama Review and TDR (which, combined, constitute the journal with the largest spread in the dataset), and compared this to all journals ( Fig. 8 ). Both curves (moving averages) tell stories of increased geographical diversity, but this was more pronounced in TDR for most years, except for the most recent five, during which combined counts for all journals overtook TDR . An important caveat for interpreting this graph is that the Tulane Drama Review  +  TDR data are counted twice: both on their own and as part of the combined totals. The reason why this makes sense is that the objective of the visualization is to show that the trend of the oldest journal in this dataset is not significantly different from the overall trend. Hence, the reason for the increased geographic diversity is not that Tulane Drama Review is the only journal for which data are available in the first few years.

Figure 8. Percentage of places that are outside of Europe and North America in sentences with the word “experimental.” A comparison of all journals (dashed line) and Tulane Drama Review/TDR (solid line). Both lines represent five-year, centered moving averages.

So far, I have described the increasing geographic diversification in broad brush strokes, but what are the specific places mentioned in the sentences? As for other named entities, I also did a semiautomatic verification and resolution, conflating a range of terms together (i.e., NYC and New York City). Table 2 displays the ten most common cities and countries, and Figure 9 plots all mentioned cities in a world map. Notably, New York is disproportionally more common, with more than a thousand mentions, all other cities being in the order of tens, and this frequency was not represented visually in the map. When manually classifying geographical entities, I also identified a series of “larger regions,” but only a handful are mentioned more than once (Europe, 16; Africa, 6; Latin America, 3; Caribbean, 2; North America, 2). The same is true for provinces/states (California, 7; Michigan, 7; Québec, 4; Fujian, 3; Flanders, 2; Bali, 2; Ohio, 2).

Figure 9. A map of all cities mentioned in sentences with the word “experimental.”

Table 2. The Ten Most Common Cities, Countries, and Regions in the Sentences

In comparison with the gender ratio visualization, here we see a clear dominance of places outside of “non-Western” spheres in more recent years. However, both the mentions of women and the mentions of places outside Europe and North America became increasingly common over time. Figure 10 places both trends side by side. We also see that, not only did the ratio of non-Western places increase at a faster pace, but it experienced its first peak much earlier. The reasons for these trends cannot be ascertained fully by the data collected here. My hope is that untangling the causal mechanisms of these patterns will prove a tantalizing question for other types of historical analysis in the future.

Figure 10. A comparison of the percentage of women and the percentage of places that are outside of Europe and North America in sentences with the word “experimental.” Both lines represent five-year, centered moving averages.

The data analyzed so far indicate that the scope of experimental theatre, as represented in scholarship, became increasingly diverse over time (even if men continue to be more associated with experimental work than women). What do these results mean for the history of experimental theatre? The current analysis doesn't seek to disprove previous claims in experimental theatre scholarship or to make extant histories of this term any less useful or accurate. But the data do reveal that, collectively, when we as scholars talk about experimental theatre, we still have a tendency to talk about men, even if we have widened the geographical scope of the term “experimental.” What shall we do with this information? Perhaps it can help us think more closely about our own biases and change the direction of our future scholarship. When we talk to our colleagues and students about experimental work, of whom are we thinking? Are we unconsciously conjuring up images of John Cage and Jerzy Grotowski? Or are we also choosing our words and examples in ways that ensure our audiences are also picturing Judith Malina and Julie Taymor?

As I bring this article to a close, I want to highlight once again the many assumptions that are baked into the current analysis. First, these trends are based on scholarship, not on actual performances as counted by playbills or critic's reviews, and it would be fascinating to compare these data to other sources. A good inspiration for doing this is Derek Miller's analysis of Broadway, which demonstrates how we can compare actual show data to plays that are included in canonical scholarly collections. Footnote 29 Articles published in the 1980s might describe performances from the 1920s. Second, these results are based on sentences in which the word “experimental” was used. Choices of how individual writers decided to split ideas into sentences have influenced these results in ways that are hard to track. Fourth, the named entities and their trends are the result of highly interpretive decisions, as I focused only on artists and producers rather than scholars.

Listing these assumptions, as I have done, helps limit and contextualize the scope of my results. However, it also strengthens the research inasmuch as it renders my decisions and shortcomings visible. Others might disagree with my interpretive decisions in the handling of my sources, and an important characteristic of data work is that these decisions can be described and disproved by subsequent research.

One question I still have, and that this article doesn't even begin to explore, is whether male artists are discussed more often than female artists in general , across all theatre scholarship. Are male scholars more likely to talk about male artists? Are younger scholars more sensitive to gender imbalances in their choice of examples? These are important questions that I hope we will take seriously as a discipline and bring the best of our methods to bear upon, from close reading to computational techniques.

The limitations of this piece of data history, which I have tried to communicate as candidly as possible, might also help other people imagine new avenues for research. For example, this article focuses on sentences, as this is easy for a systematic first case study. But what about artists whose work is described at length in a single article? Do we see the same trends in such cases? As one anonymous reviewer of this article suggested, we could also further contextualize these results with some other possible terms and find trends for named entities near words such as “mainstream,” “commercial,” or “Broadway,” to name a few. This might require more advanced computational techniques that justify recourse to machine learning. As I noted earlier, I preferred to eschew this approach here, given the relative smallness of my dataset. But if we seek to expand our attention to longer portions of scholarly texts, the dataset will be much bigger and the trade-off of size and precision might no longer lead to the same methodological choices.

This paper identified a moderate increase in the representation of women in sentences about experimental work, and a more dramatic increase in the global geographies represented in the same dataset. However, the extent to which this is an eminently positive development should also be scrutinized with critical attention. It would be reductive to assume that every single label (modern, contemporary, classical, etc.) should be increasingly diverse. Perhaps, as the objects of scholarly attention become wider, the labels should also become more varied. There is a danger in recycling old terms to describe new work. As Rosella Ferrari notes in her study of experimental theatre in China, it is important to trace the Eurocentric assumptions of constructs such as the “avant-garde” before uncritically applying them to other contexts. Footnote 30

A fuller commitment to tracking the diversification of scholarship requires more studies similar to the present one. If we, as theatre scholars, are so inclined, we would need a more general and expansive analysis of all artists and places that have been described in scholarship. This type of work has been developed in other fields (such as the aforementioned analysis of literary scholarship by Andrew Piper), and data can help us better understand the history, diversity, and omissions of our collective work as scholars. The type of computational work outlined here, which combines systematic interpretive attention at the level of individual instances with the explanatory power of visualizations, can also be applied to understand further the shape and history of theatre research.

When collecting the data, I had expected that both geographical and gender diversity would rise slowly over time. But I believed that, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the majority of people mentioned in the scholarship would still be men, and the majority of places would still be in Europe and North America. I was right in my first hypothesis, but I stand happily corrected on the second. This is why data and quantification matter. People are naturally good at noticing changes, but the vagaries of time-based trends might elude us if we don't rely on numbers. We might thus be blind to positive developments, or inattentive to truly dire imbalances, which might be worse than we fear. In other words, the main advantage of quantitative studies is that they give precise contours to the vague shape of our intuitions.

Tackling important issues requires seeking precise data when possible, and considering sources of uncertainty when needed. At the time of this writing, recent historical events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented floods in Europe and Asia have demonstrated all too well the challenges we face in areas such as public health and climate change. We might argue that the crises before us are evident even without looking at the numbers. But quantitative precision adds nuance and context to our impressions, and can help us better understand our current moment and our potential for future action. In the digital humanities, a particularly interesting example of data-supported strategies for real-world interventions is found in Verhoeven et al.'s use of simulations to model the impact of different policies that aim to bring greater gender equity and inclusivity to film production. Footnote 31 Empirical analyses backed by data cannot help but sharpen our perceptions and enhance our resolve to change what we see before us.

Miguel Escobar Varela is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. His primary area of research, often in collaboration with scientists and engineers, is the application of computational methods—including textual analytics, network analysis, image and video processing, and geospatial analysis—to the study of theatre. He is also involved in the development of multimedia interfaces for theatre research. His publications include Theater as Data: Computational Journeys into Theater Research (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and articles in such journals as Theatre Research International, Asian Theatre Journal, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Journal of Historical Network Research. A full list of publications and digital projects is available at https://miguelescobar.com .

I would like to thank Amy Kirchhoff, Ted Lawless, and the rest of the Constellate team for their support obtaining the data for this article.

1 Hoffman , Theodore , “ An Audience of Critics and the Lost Art of ‘Seeing’ Plays ,” Tulane Drama Review 4 . 1 ( 1959 ): 31–41 CrossRef Google Scholar , at 41.

2 Chen , Lin , “ Wounds of the Past: The Chuanju Performance of Qingtan (Sighing), ” New Theatre Quarterly 35 . 3 ( 2019 ): 221–37 CrossRef Google Scholar , at 231.

3 James M. Harding, The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theater and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).

4 Ibid ., 11.

5 Debra Caplan, “ Reassessing Obscurit y: The Case for Big Data in Theatre History,” Theatre Journal 68.4 (2016): 555–73, at 557.

6 Bay-Cheng , Sarah , “ Digital Historiography and Performance ,” Theatre Journal 68 . 4 ( 2016 ): 507–27 CrossRef Google Scholar .

7 Caplan , Debra , “ Notes from the Frontier: Digital Scholarship and the Future of Theatre Studies ,” Theatre Journal 67 . 2 ( 2015 ): 347–59 CrossRef Google Scholar , at 355–9.

8 Examples of the book-length analyses are Clarisse Badiot, Performing Arts and Digital Humanities: From Traces to Data (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021) and Miguel Escobar Varela, Theater as Data: Computational Journeys into Theater Research (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021).

9 Miller , Derek , “ Average Broadway ,” Theatre Journal 68 . 4 ( 2016 ): 529–53 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Vareschi , Mark and Burkert , Mattie , “ Archives, Numbers, Meaning: The Eighteenth-Century Playbill at Scale ,” Theatre Journal 68 . 4 ( 2016 ): 597–613 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Bench , Harmony and Elswit , Kate , “ Mapping Movement on the Move: Dance Touring and Digital Methods ,” Theatre Journal 68 . 4 ( 2016 ): 575–96 CrossRef Google Scholar .

10 See, for example, Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018); Alan Liu, Friending the Past: The Sense of History in the Digital Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Andrew Piper, Enumerations: Data and Literary Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); Folgert Karsdorp, Mike Kestemont, and Allen Riddell, Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021); and Hoyt Long, The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).

11 Andrew Piper, Can We Be Wrong? The Problem of Textual Evidence in a Time of Data (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 4.

12 Shannon Jackson, Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

13 Deb Verhoeven et al., “Controlling for Openness in the Male-Dominated Collaborative Networks of the Global Film Industry,” PLOS One 15.6 (2020): 1–23, e0234460, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234460 .

14 Richard Jean So, Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).

15 Underwood , Ted , “ A Genealogy of Distant Reading ,” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 . 2 ( 2017 ) Google Scholar .

16 Underwood , Ted , “ Why Literary Time Is Measured in Minutes ,” ELH 85 . 2 ( 2018 ): 341–65 CrossRef Google Scholar .

17 Escobar Varela, Theater as Data, 7–13.

18 Melanie Walsh and Maria Antoniak, “The Goodreads ‘Classics’: A Computational Study of Readers, Amazon, and Crowdsourced Amateur Criticism,” Post45 × Journal of Cultural Analytics 1.1 (2021).

19 For an overview of the sometimes staggering planetary and financial costs of training ML models see Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).

20 The libraries are Pandas v1.2.4, Seaborn v0.11.1, Matplotlib v3.4.2, Rich v10.1.0, FuzzyWuzzy v0.18.0, and spaCy v3.0.

21 For more on interactive systems for semiautomatic data annotation see Bárbara C. Benato et al., “Semi-Automatic Data Annotation Guided by Feature Space Projection,” Pattern Recognition 109 (2021), 107612, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2020.107612 .

22 For more on fuzzy deduplication see S. Preetha Bini and S. Abirami, “Proof of Retrieval and Ownership for Secure Fuzzy Deduplication of Multimedia Data,” Progress in Computing, Analytics and Networking : Proceedings of ICANN 2017, ed. Prasant Kumar Pattnaik et al. (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2018): 245–55.

23 See, for example, Miguel Won, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, and Bruno Martins, “Ensemble Named Entity Recognition (NER): Evaluating NER Tools in the Identification of Place Names in Historical Corpora,” Frontiers in Digital Humanities 5 (2018); and Alexander Erdmann et al., “Practical, Efficient, and Customizable Active Learning for Named Entity Recognition in the Digital Humanities,” Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2019): 2223–34.

24 Archana Goyal, Vishal Gupta, and Manish Kumar, “Recent Named Entity Recognition and Classification Techniques: A Systematic Review,” Computer Science Review 29 (2018): 21–43, at 21.

25 Gómez-Peña , Guillermo , “ Disclaimer ,” TDR 50 . 1 ( 2006 ): 149–58 CrossRef Google Scholar , at 154 (emphasis added).

26 See, for example, Elaine Aston, Restaging Feminisms (Cham: Palgrave Pivot/Springer Nature, 2020).

27 An important referent for this type of research in the computational realm is the analysis by Verhoeven et al., “Controlling for Openness,” 6.

28 So, Redlining Culture, 6.

29 Miller, “Average Broadway,” 548–51.

30 Rosella Ferrari, Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (London: Seagull, 2012).

31 Verhoeven et al., “Controlling for Openness,” 16–20.

No CrossRef data available.

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• Volume 64, Issue 1
• Miguel Escobar Varela (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000552

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Why Do Experimental Theatre?

The Public's Under the Radar Festival tackles that vital artistic question

After a two-year sojourn in Switzerland, Mark Russell just got back to the United States, and he can tell you exactly what time he flew into JFK: "September 3rd, around 3 o'clock," he says jovially over the phone. He came home for the final stretch of planning the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival , whose 12th iteration runs January 6–17.

Russell founded the festival 12 years ago, as a way of showcasing experimental artists from the U.S. and abroad. To date UTR (as it's called by fans) has presented 194 companies from 40 countries. Then in 2013, Russell's wife received a two-year job opportunity overseas. That meant a splitting of duties, with longtime UTR associate producer Meiyin Wang promoted to co-director. She held down the fort on Lafayette Street, while 3,800 miles away, Russell "would do absolutely nothing all day and then around 6 o'clock, I'd start a Google Hangout with the staff."

2016's main line-up is an eight-show mix of first timers (such as French artists Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort, and Seattle artist Ahamefule J. Oluo) and repeat visitors (such as the locally based 600 Highwaymen and Japanese playwright/director Toshiki Okada).

One selection is even culled from Russell's time abroad: Samedi Détente , from newcomer Dorothée Munyaneza, a French dancer/singer. She was born and raised in Rwanda and was 12 when the Rwandan genocide occurred. "It is the first time that I feel like we're seeing a real Rwandan voice and not a Western interpretation of what went down in Rwanda," says Russell, who saw the piece in Ghent. "The thing about living in Europe was I had access to not only all the European work, but work that was coming through from Africa and Asia. And that was really exciting."

There are also two works in UTR 2016 that were developed last year as part of the Public's one-year-old Devised Theater Initiative: The Art of Luv (Part 1) from Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble and #ItGetsBitter from Dark Matter. The latter is presented as part of the Under the Radar + Joe's Pub: In Concert lineup, which will host three music-theatre hybrids.

There are also in-progress showings from the Devised Theatre Working Group, six troupes whose pieces are currently being developed at the Public.

"It is harder and harder and harder to make work in New York City," says Russell. "The pockets of where creative people can live are far flung now." As such, the folks at UTR are "[opening] up these resources that we are lucky enough to have here at the Public."

A recipient of those resources is 600 Highwaymen, made up of husband-wife duo Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone. Their movement piece The Record , containing 45 people, was a New York Times critic's pick when it ran at UTR in 2014. They are coming back in 2016 with Employee of the Year , and the Public has provided funding to develop a new work that will premiere in UTR 2017.

"They're supporting us as artists, not just on a project basis," says Browde. "Systemic support of artists in America doesn't really happen, so we felt really honored and blessed to have their support throughout."

And it goes without saying that the 2014 showing at the Public increased 600 Highwaymen's profile enormously, allowing them to tour Employee of the Year domestically and internationally before its upcoming touchdown in NYC. The show stars five pre-teen girls who take turns portraying one woman in different stages of her life. It may seem incongruous to have an 11-year-old play a grown woman, but according to Browde, that's the point. "There's a gap between the performer and the material, and a gap between that and the audience," she says. "And the goal there is if you don't connect all the dots [as an artist], it gives the audience something to do." She then adds. "I think the show is the most successful when you forget that it's a child."

Between the main program, the Joe's Pub works, and the Devised Theatre Working Group, Public Theater visitors can catch a grand total of 18 shows at UTR 2016. "The core line that goes through all of our festival is, 'Why do theatre now?'" says Russell. "All these works, it's all about risk, about new work. And so we're asking the audience to join in that and to take risk. What I'm guaranteeing is it at least is going to have an integrity of process."

Laughing, he adds, "So if you hate it, there's going to be reasons to hate it."

Follow Diep Tran at @ DiepThought . Follow TDF at @ TDFNYC .

Photos by Maria Baranova. Top photo: A scene from 'Employee of the Year' by 600 Highwaymen.

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Theatre of Cruelty

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• Nouse - The Movements: The Theatre of Cruelty

Theatre of Cruelty , project for an experimental theatre that was proposed by the French poet, actor, and theorist Antonin Artaud and that became a major influence on avant-garde 20th-century theatre.

Artaud, influenced by Symbolism and Surrealism , along with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron founded the Théâtre Alfred Jarry in 1926; they presented four programs, including August Strindberg ’s A Dream Play and Vitrac’s Victor , before disbanding in 1929. Between 1931 and 1936 Artaud formulated a theory for what he called a Theatre of Cruelty in a series of essays published in the Nouvelle Revue Française and collected in 1938 as Le Théâtre et son double ( The Theatre and Its Double ).

Artaud believed that civilization had turned humans into sick and repressed creatures and that the true function of the theatre was to rid humankind of these repressions and liberate each individual’s instinctual energy. He proposed removing the barrier of the stage between performers and audience and producing mythic spectacles that would include verbal incantations, groans and screams, pulsating lighting effects, and oversized stage puppets and props. Although only one of Artaud’s plays, Les Cenci (1935), based on works by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Stendhal , was ever produced to illustrate these theories, his ideas influenced the productions of Jean-Louis Barrault , Jerzy Grotowski , Jean Vilar , Peter Brook , and The Living Theatre as well as the work of such playwrights as Arthur Adamov , Jean Genet , and Jacques Audiberti .

La MaMa’s Archive of Experimental Theater

By Ariel Kates

For more than half a century, La MaMa E.T.C. has brought amazing off-off-Broadway theater to the East Village. 74 East Fourth Street, designated a New York City landmark on November 17, 2009, was built in 1873 for the Aschenbrödel Verein (“Cinderella Society”), a musicians’ club formed in Kleindeutschland in 1860. In 1969, it became Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. And “Experimental” is not just its name, it’s the theater’s philosophy, from the very beginning when it was founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart. The theater specializes in the wilder kinds of theater, from plays in multiple languages to horror stories that take place entirely on a single love seat, La MaMa’s archive holds at least one piece of paper from every performance ever held at La MaMa — sometimes up to 90 per year. Dive in with us! 

First, La Mama’s Story

The 2014 Village Award Winner was first housed at 321 East Ninth Street, which Ellen Stewart leased. Her clothing boutique was on the first floor, and the theater in the basement. As was explained by La MaMa Archivist Sophie Glidden-Lyon, a theater license was very difficult to obtain, but a cafe licesnce was not, and so in the early days, performances were presented as floor shows for the cafe, and snacks were served. Fittingly, the theater’s first name was Café La MaMa.

When La MaMa moved to its second home, it officially became La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club). Stewart began to charge admission for plays and ran the theater as a private club. The theater became a nonprofit in 1967. It officially moved to its current home on East Fourth Street in 1969.

Claims to Fame

La Mama has staged more than three thousand productions in New York, and won more than sixty Obie Awards. Ellen Stewart received a MacArthur Fellowship Award in 1985. La MaMa built connections all over the world, touring productions in Europe and bringing international productions to the East Village.  

La MaMa has been home to such playwrights as Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, and Terrence McNally; directors including Tom O’Horgan, Joseph Chaikin, Robert Wilson, and Richard Foreman; and such actors as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Bill Irwin, and Danny DeVito. The Native American Theater Ensemble (NATE), founded 1971 by Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa and Delaware nations), made its debut performance at La Mama Theater of its first piece, Body Indian, in 1972. 

La MaMa, which is still going strong and anchors the Fourth Arts Block, best epitomizes the Off-Off-Broadway theaters that from the 1960s to today have been a defining part of the theatrical culture of New York City.

La MaMa is home to eighteen repertory companies and generally produces a new play every three weeks. La MaMa boasts three theaters on East Fourth Street as well as a rehearsal space on Great Jones Street. Most recently, an art gallery was added on East 1st Street. 

La Mama’s Archive

Established in the early 1970s, La MaMa Archives collects, preserves, and exhibits records of permanent historical value relating to La MaMa and the Off-Off-Broadway movement. In doing so, it draws on a deep vein of in-house institutional memory, the passionate community of artists whose work has found a home on La MaMa stages, and a diversity of scholars, educators, and international artists with whom they regularly collaborate.

All of the productions, the sets, wild and marvelous masks, puppets, playbills, furniture, posters, and more can be found in La MaMa’s archive, which is on the mezzanine of the theater building (and is 100% accessible). Each room is full of ephemera, and archivist Sophie Glidden-Lyon gave Village Preservation a virtual tour of the space, which also includes such special stories as how, exactly, La MaMa came to be called La MaMa — you can watch here, and decide whether or not the story sounds true or apocryphal: 

La MaMa’s collections offer an intimate perspective on major social, aesthetic, and political movements of the 20th and 21st centuries that resonate with histories of peoples across the globe. Where else would you find original plays by Vietnam War veterans alongside video of performances about the AIDS crisis; unpublished scripts by Japanese filmmaker Shuji Terayama alongside photos and correspondence by Polish revolutionary director Tadeusz Kantor? A portion of these materials are available for viewing on our new Digital Collections website, catalog.lamama.org .

While Ellen Stewart passed away in 2011, her legacy lives on at La Mama, and much of that is housed in the Archive. From photos to documents, Ellen’s visage watches over the archive, and the community that she envisioned and built as a beacon of culture , along with her countless collaborators. 

More Resources, and Accessing the Archive

La MaMa’s Archive is open to visitors by appointment. For more information please contact Archives Director, Ozzie Rodriguez at 212-260-2471 or email [email protected]. 

To explore La MaMa’s building, and the other amazing theaters of the East Village, check out our Theater Tour on our East Village Building Blocks website — here .

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