Alternative theatre

The word alternative, as found in terms like alternative theatre, alternative performance and alternative culture), became and is a term used to refer to the evolution of the radical anti-mainstream and anti-commercial dance and theatre that developed in the Europe, Britain and the USA amid the political and social ferment of the 1960s and 1970s. Related to the earlier concept of political theatre, it was one of a broad spectrum of terms thus applied, others being fringe theatre, guerilla theatre, avant garde theatre, experimental theatre, and even community theatre.

These theatres eschewed the form and content of mainstream theatre, instead experimenting with a wide variety of techniques, styles, and spaces for producing theatre that spoke to contemporary issues—civil rights and the Vietnam War being especially prominent—in a startling, and to many an offensive, manner. Since so many of these alternative, radical theatres are rooted in populist theatrical traditions