Western culture has a long and fraught history of cultural appropriation, a history that has particular resonance within performance practice. Patrice Pavis asks what is at stake - politically and aesthetically - when cultures meet at the crossroads of theatre. A series of recent productions are analyzed, including Brook's Mahabharata, Cixous/Mnouchkine's Indiande and Barba's Faust. These tend to focus discussions of translation, appropriation, adaptation, cultural problems of colonialism, anthropology and ethnography.