Though it has a long tradition of producing avant-garde drama, the city-financed Theater am Turm had been struggling financially and looking for new creative direction.

In the attached Neues Schauspielhaus you'll find new interpretations of classics and avant-garde drama, while the Brauhauskeller, the smallest venue, is used for anything from Elvis musicals to Edward Albee.

The New Theatre Royal in Guildhall Walk near to the City Centre, specialises in classical, modern and avant-garde drama and the newly-restored Kings Theatre in Southsea's Albert Road has many amateur musicals as well an increasing number of national tours.

(A K A LUMBERJACK MESSIAH)' Even lumberjacks get the cosmic blues in the world of Richard Foreman, the Florenz Ziegfeld of avant-garde drama.

The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire.

Poland avant-garde drama in Yugoslavia (1945-1990)

She then signed on to film an avant-garde drama, Purple Butterfly (2003), which competed in the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

"Welles was very interested in fiction, often including fictions he told about himself," said Ms. Bogart, who conceived and directed this latest in a number of avant-garde biographical dramas dealing with what she calls "big people."

So here we are mired in a recession at a time when doomsayers see the lights dimming on the Great White Way, and we run across an absolute novice - a waiter, in fact - starting his own theater company and being the producer of an avant-garde Russian drama.

A rehearsal for an avant-garde drama Off Off Broadway?