Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began 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. It is used more or less interchangeably with the term avant-garde theatre. Experimental theatre is what it is, namely trying something new.
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.
Read more about Experimental Theatre: Relationships To Audience, Social Contexts, Methods of Creation, Physical Effects
Famous quotes containing the words experimental and/or theatre:
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)