In the first period of funding (2022-2026), the research project investigated  participation and dissociation as dynamics that impact political theatre. The research took as its focus the tradition of activist theatre, which has gained steam under the banner of global protest movements and networking possibilities provided by the Internet. The project initially made the observation that performance forms standing in the tradition of the agitprop theatre of the 1920s and 1930s often confront their audiences with models of collectivity that—although created in the “as-if” mode—are to be perceived by the spectators as real political interventions and subsequently “realized” by them. The theatre brings its own distinctions into political conflicts and controversies when it intervenes politically: those, for example, between the actors and spectators, or between participants and bystanders. Whether the promise of participation implicated by many activist theatre forms is even sustainable under such conditions was examined within the project across three periods of crisis: around 1930 (Subproject SP 1), around 1968 (SP 2), and in the present (SP 3). The subprojects asked to which extent theatrical communities and performative practices of collectivization and connectivity ultimately generate real divides. Addressing these questions led to an understanding of the features of theatrical interventions as compared to other forms of intervention.