The Grips Theatre, founded in 1969 by Volker Ludwig, performs plays intended to provoke clearheaded imaginative thinking on the part of the children, adolescents, and adults who see their productions. Grips does this by creating and producing original plays that retain the idealistic moment of hope that social relations and people themselves can be qualitatively changed. "Grips" is a German slang term for wit, common sense, and imagination all in one. Its meaning, in the context of the company's title, is to use one's wits and imagination to overcome repression. In the 1980s, after nearly two decades of efforts by Grips to propogate the idea of a realistic, emancipatory theater for children and youth in the Federal Republic of Germany, the company remains very much in the forefront of the theater scene in Europe and the exception to the rule for much of youth theater around the world. The sucess of Grips productions has prompted more playwrights to concentrate on youth theater. Most important for the effectiveness of Grips itself is its accent on continuity. The historical struggle of the Grips ensemble to develop collective theater work is exemplary, and their experiments with emancipatory theater have indeed brought children's theater to a new stage. (MS)