The theatre of Eastern Europe has not always benefited as fully as might have been expected from the supposed freedoms which followed the collapse of Communism. State support for institutional theatre has been drastically reduced, while the ‘alternative’ theatre, though no longer constrained by a formal censorship, has had seriously to consider what it is now alternative to. Magdalena Gołaczyńska takes 1989 as starting point for a survey both of the framework within which alternative theatre now works, and of the three main strands that have emerged in the closing decade of the twentieth century – of companies continuing to produce socially critical work, of groups exploring experience at a more personal and existential level, and of ‘collective creators’ whose concerns are rather with pushing the boundaries of performance itself. Magdalena Gołaczyńska teaches at the University of Wroclaw and the State Academy of Drama in Cracow, and is author of a doctoral study of contemporary alternative theatre.