avant-garde
In the arts, those artists or works that are in the forefront of new developments in their media. The term was introduced (as was ‘reactionary’) after the French Revolution, when it was used to describe any socialist political movement.
| The term became popular during the 1960s for theatre that broke traditional conventions, inspired by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht. Proponents of avant-garde theatre included US theatre director Robert Wilson, German dramatist Heiner Müller, and the US-based Living Theater group. |
