ABSTRACT
The concept of transformative aesthetics highlights the transformative power of art. This chapter discusses the degree of the unforeseen through recourse to examples from the history of professional theater in the German-speaking countries. The historical avant-garde movements as well as the theater and performance art of the last decades have opened up ample space for improvisation and related opportunities for the unforeseen to happen. The spatiality is created in, through and as the performance space and is perceived under the conditions set by the space. The bare stage even highlights the transience of the performance, the process of its permanent re-creation and redefinition with the help of the special uses made of the performance space. The transience of a performance is epitomized by its tonality. One can hardly imagine anything that would be more fleeting than sound. Emerging from silence, sound exposes and fills the space, only to fade and disappear in the next moment.
