93 The Dynamics of the Estonian Theatre System: in Defence of Repertoire Theatre 1 Anneli Saro This article reviews the dynamics of the Estonian theatre system throughout the course of its history, concentrating on the period of the last 23 years, known as a period of political and economical transition. Since the political, economic, to some extent artistic aspects of developments in the Estonian theatre field during the period 1985−2005 have been more closely investigated elsewhere (Saro 2004, Saro 2009), special attention shall be paid here to institutional developments. In the following, I shall consider Estonian theatre of the past decades as an integrated system (see the scheme below), and discuss the impact of this system on individual institutions and persons. For the sake of clarity, audience research will be left out. In the second part of the article, I will focus specifically on the institutional and individual aspects of repertoire theatre in the Estonian theatre field. The theoretical framework for the analysis at hand is based on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, especially on his articles on field theory and cultural production (see for example Bourdieu 1993). In keeping with the material under study, I propose some new distinctions and adjustments to the framework. Even though theatre and cultural fields are placed in “the field of power” (political, economical and social field), some agents of the theatre field − theatre- makers and spectators − hold a special bridge position, and are located either between fields or actively crossing them. These agents symbolize the freedom and mobility of individuals, which cannot be restricted, organized, or confined by a system or an institution. In contemporary postmodern society they might not even belong to a single specific cultural 1 The article has been written with support from the Estonian Science Foundation grant No. 6689. CULTURAL FIELD D THEATRE SYSTEM/FIELD: educational, production, distribution, reception domain THEATRE MAKERS SPECTA- TORS POLITICAL, ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL FIELD