Varieties of Independent Music Theatre in Europe

Hans-Jörg Kapp begins his essay on independent music theatre in German-speaking Europe with the following sentence: ‘It exists, the “independent music theatre scene”’.² It is typical for this type of theatre that one would feel the need to point out its very existence. With an eye towards independent music theatre in Germany, I too have argued that there is certainly a vibrant scene, although – unlike independent dance theatre, for example – it is not yet really present to the general public.³ Its manifestations seem too heterogeneous to enjoy recognition as a cohesive whole, and they often vanish into the