The author points out that the provocativeness that is at the basis of the creations belonging to different art trends (constructivism, futurism, surrealism, minimalism, conceptualism and so on) played a key role in the art of the 20th – 21st centuries. At present, provocation has become the main strategy for the development of the theatrical process, which makes it necessary for theatre science to try to delineate the theoretical outline of what we call provocativity. The author, using worldknown theatrical cases, determines the specificity and functions of provocativity. The latter consists in the fact that the provocation, allows a clearer outline of the boundaries of art, broadening the permissibility framework and increasing the degree of tolerance in society, breaks the taboos, from the sexual to the social ones, contributes to changing the artistic paradigm, destroys stereotypes, radically changes conceptions, artistic means, methods, models of organizing the artistic process, impacts the emergence of radical aesthetics, carries out artistic and social reforms.