The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, to outline the institutional character of theatre; second, to show that institutional constraints on theatre contain critical theatre practice by selectively legitimating those practices that represent and reproduce cultural hegemony; and, third, to suggest that the force of these legitimate theatre boundaries derives less from explicitly social or political exclusion than from the apparently autonomous criterion of literary or dramatic excellence. Legitimate theatre--including the abstract expressionism of contemporary performance art as well as the classical and commercial repertoire--is defined against autonomous aesthetic or literary standards, while practices such as music hall or political review that might well be excluded because of intention and audience are dismissed as essentially untheatrical. In other words the only grounds for debate legitimated by the institution are aesthetic; excluded as illegitimate are not only particular practices known as "entertainment," but also the formulation of "extra-aesthetic" factors such as material organization and audience that make such activities possible. Legitimation is thus not just normal, "legal" aesthetic practice; it is also the site of dispute over what constitutes those norms (Murray, 1987: 111).

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