GERMAN theatregoers are a hardened bunch, accustomed to seeing actors urinate, perform sex acts and mutilate live animals on state-sponsored stages.

The latest incident, however, has left the cultural establishment gasping for breath: in mid-performance an actor waded into the audience, dropped a dead swan in the lap of the country’s leading theatre critic, snatched his notebook and chased him from the premises.

For once, the audience did not applaud. Indeed, the German theatre world has been in uproar since the performance last week at the Frankfurt Theatre House.

The unfortunate critic, Gerhard Stadelmaier, of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, became a target because of his old-fashioned ideas about how theatre should be staged.

“This rubbish theatre has gone too far,” he said yesterday. “It is robbing us of our imaginations. When blood is called for you do not have to squirt syrup. Sex and desire do not have to be made flesh. You don’t have to show everything, but you do have to act.”

While London’s West End is booming on the back of musicals and comedies of manners, German threatres are resorting to shock tactics to fill seats. Days ago, a performance artist chopped off the heads of two rabbits on stage. His intention, he said, was to demonstrate that animals had to be killed before they could be eaten.

Herr Stadelmaier’s mistake was to show open disdain. The attack came 25 minutes into a rendering of Eugene Ionesco’s The Great Massacre or the Triumph of Death. Until then it had been standard fare: actors had vomited mineral water, a pregnant woman had simulated the breaking of her waters and another actress had masturbated two of her colleagues.

The play, written in 1970, was regarded as a timely piece since it is about a civilisation that is cracking up because of the fear of plague. Outside, in the real world, German soldiers were already on their way to seal off farms hit by bird flu. So nobody was surprised when the actress playing the pregnant woman suddenly gave birth to a swan.

The actor Thomas Lawinky pronounced it a healthy child. Then he caught sight of Herr Stadelmaier, quietly giggling in the front row. The actor marched towards him, and threw the swan into his lap.

The actor snatched the critic’s notes and tried to read them aloud. Unable to understand the handwriting he started to scream, then chased the frightened journalist out of the theatre. “This was a physical attack on me, both on my body and on the freedom of the press,” said Herr Stadelmaier.

Petra Roth, the Mayor of Frankfurt, complained to the theatre and the actor was sacked. This in turn has been hailed as an attack on the freedom of expression. Radical theatre directors have rallied round Herr Lawinky. Yesterday he was offered a place in the Berliner Ensemble by Claus Peymann, its director.

The acting community claims that Herr Lawinky was merely trying to involve the audience. The critics say that he grossly overstepped the mark. Herr Stadelmaier behaved correctly, said one of his colleagues, Hellmuth Karasek, of Die Welt. “He simply did not conform to the hypocritical sadistic expectations set by politically correct theatre — he stayed true to his profession and to basic good manners.”