German Expressionist Theatre: The Actor and the Stage considers the powerfully stylized, anti-realistic styles of acting on the German Expressionist stage from 1916 to 1921. It relates this striking departure from the dominant European acting tradition of realism to the specific cultural crises that enveloped the German nation during the course of its involvement in World War I. This book describes three distinct Expressionist acting styles, all of which in their own ways attempted to show how symbolic stage performance could be a powerful rhetorical resource for a culture struggling to come to terms with the crises of historical change. The examination of Expressionist script and actor memoirs allows for an unprecedented focus on description and analysis of acting itself.

Contains citations to books, dissertations, and articles in English and German concerning German expressionist drama of the early twentieth century, including separate sections devoted to German dramatists Ernst Barlach, Bertolt Brecht, Arnolt Bronnen, Reinhard Goering, Walter Hasenclever, Hans Henny Jahnn, Hanns Johst, Georg Kaiser, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Kornfeld, Ludwig Rubiner, Reinhard Johannes Sorge, Carl Sternheim, Ernst Toller, Fritz von Unruh, and Franz Werfel.

Although often dismissed as a minor offshoot of the better-known German movement, expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism. Situating expressionism within the context of early twentieth-century American culture, Walker demonstrates how playwrights who wrote in this mode were responding both to new communications technologies and to the perceived threat they posed to the embodied act of meaning. At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.

Book on expressionism in German motion pictures.

Covering classic films such as 'The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari' and 'Nosferatu' as well as under-appreciated examples such as 'Asphalt', this volume forms an essential introduction to one of cinema's most historically important movements.