Expressionism

This style of theatre began as a reaction to realism and reached its peak in Germany after the First World War. Playwrights such as Kaiser and Toller wrote plays in which the characters were not real people, but symbols of good and evil, power and oppression, the elite and the socially disadvantaged, and the dialogue they spoke expressed this lack of reality quite deliberately. The expressionist stage was bare, lit by shafts of white light against a black background. It often featured machinery, such as metal bridges that moved up and down or vast flights of stairs and platforms. The English designer Edward Gordon Craig designed extraordinary expressionistic sets that influenced stage designers throughout the century.

Expressionism was replaced in Germany by the political theatre of Bertolt Brecht, which has become one of the major styles of contemporary theatre throughout the world. In the past thirty years, conventional political theatre has evolved into a powerful tool for social change in Africa, Asia and South America in 'theatre for development' and 'liberation theatre'. 

We will benefit from looking at how Abstract Expressionism and Absurdist Drama relate to one another, on a more general level. Both movements reared their heads in the years following World War I & II. During the late forties and early fifties, “ ‘we felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles, a world devastated by a great depression and a fierce World War…’ ” World War II dealt a punch to the face of the world that broke its nose, one of those breaks which, even after the bone is reset, irrevocably alters that face. 

Task: Describe how the following sets are expressionist, according to the above definitions. One paragraph per stage.

What does it mean?

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