ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a specific exploration of hystero-theatrical gesture in Viennese theater and its relationship to modernist painting. Although a strong distinction exists between "high" theater and "low" cabaret, where musical theater replaced classical drama, hystero-theatrical gestures appear to have been treated similarly in both arenas. The visual and performing arts of fin-de-siècle Vienna often overlapped, since a number of modernist painters were also active in the city's Cabaret Fledermaus. The language of hysteria was present moreover in the second major collaboration staged by Reinhardt and Eysoldt at the Kleines Theater: Hofmannsthal's Elektra. Examining the appearance of "mad" movements on the dramatic stage, within scientific treatises, and in modernist canvases, thus provides a fuller and more accurate picture of the cross-disciplinary interest in hystero-theatrical gestures in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Kokoschka again serves as a key figure, since his particular artistic ventures deliberately blurred the boundary between painting and theater.
