“Rethéâtraliser le théâtre! Le théâtre pour le théâtre!” (“Retheatricalize the theater! Theater for the sake of theater!”) rang the epigraph of Georg Fuchs's 1909 Revolution in the Theater. It became the battle cry of the third phase of the search for the New Theater at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (the return to the arbitrary conventionality of theatrical art), which emerged after the experiences of naturalism and symbolism, and after Appia and Craig had placed the problem of the actor at the center of the aesthetics of the New Theater. Georg Fuchs, director of the Künstlertheater in Munich (1908–1914) and other proponents of the retheatricalization of the theater: such as Nikolai Evreinov (creator of the mass spectacle The Storming of the Winter Palace in 1920 for 100,000 spectators) and Jacques Copeau (founder in 1913 of the Parisian Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier), were linked with the earlier reformers by the categorical renunciation of all illusionism in the theater. They differed from the naturalists and the first symbolists in the absolutization of the conventionality of the scenic art, and from Craig and Appia by treating the plays not as aesthetic objects, but as chances for the creative interaction of stage and audience.

It is also possible, however, to discern in this phase a continuation of the antinomies of the entire movement, so visible in the original naturalist-symbolist synchronicity. On this occasion it is a matter of reconciling the post-symbolist principle of indirect presentation or re-presentation with reflections on the essence of the effect of the play on the audience as derived from the scientific postulates of naturalism, and on the “theatricality instinct” (based on transformational rules). According to Evreinov, this latter was assumed to be a natural and primal human instinct, and at the same time the source of all art (as proved by the psychology of play, especially among children; the anthropology that described the ritual foundations of primitive culture; and finally the “theater of historical events,” such as those of the Napoleonic era).