It has become popular of late to call the GRIPS Theater the "Schaubiihne of Children" equating it with the Schaubiihne am halleschen Ufer, the famous acting troupe centered around Peter Stein, which has established a prominent position in the German theater scene.1 However, it is impossible to draw anything but extrinsic comparisons between the two without playing one attempt to develop a progressive theater off against another. GRIPS and the Schaubiubne diverge sharply in their assumptions, presentations and impact. Whereas GRIPS in a sense arose out of nothing and was financially self-supporting in the first years of its existence as "Children's Theater in the Reich Cabaret" (Kindertheater im Reichskabarett), Peter Stein had essentially built and tested his company (in Munich, Bremen and Zurich) before he moved into the Theater am Halleschen Ufer. That theater already had a reputation as an alternative to the inflated and empty artistic-organizational methods of the city theaters. Both the Schaubiihne and GRIPS have been able to stabilize themselves organizationally and to continue making qualitative improvements in spite of massive internal and external difficulties. Whereas the process of consolidation at the Schaubiihne has been accompanied by a loss of political commitment, the development of GRIPS has proceeded in exactly the opposite direction. What began in the mid 1960s as little more than children's entertainment and what became