The emerging sub-field of applied theater encompasses a wide range of pro-social 'alternative' theater practices, but it also refers to a discursive practice that seeks to reconcile the apparently contradictory claims of the politics of egalitarian redistribution and the politics of difference. The argument in this paper is that this emerging political position reflects a contemporary turn towards the identity politics of recognition and away from political theater's traditional concern with the 'old left' politics of redistribution. A critique of the discourse of applied theater, based on the political philosophy of Nancy Fraser and James Tully, leads to a consideration of the potential of a new left politics of recognition and dialogue in which the processes of participation in social and artistic struggle are seen as the practice of civic dialogic freedom.