ABSTRACT
The changed use of theatre signs leads to a blurred boundary between theatre and forms of practice such as Performance Art, forms which strive for an experience of the real. With reference to the notion and practice of ‘Concept Art’ (as it flourished especially around 1970), postdramatic theatre can be seen as an attempt to conceptualize art in the sense that it offers not a representation but an intentionally unmediated experience of the real (time, space, body): Concept Theatre. Since the immediacy of a shared experience between artists and audience is at the heart of Performance Art, it is obvious that the closer theatre gets to an event and to the performance artist’s gesture of self-presentation, the more a common borderland between Performance and Theatre develops – especially since in the Performance Art of the 1980s a counter trend towards theatricalization could be observed. In this context, RoseLee Goldberg cites artists like Jesurun, Fabre, LeCompte (of The Wooster Group), Wilson and, following him, Lee Breuer (The Gospel at Colonus, 1984). In addition, a new amalgamation of opera, performance and theatre emerges. Goldberg further mentions the Italian groups Falso Movimento and La Gaia Scienza, the Spanish La Fura dels Baus, and Arianne Minouschkin (sic!) and others.1
