ABSTRACT
Expressionist scenic designers, like Emil Pirchan, Ludwig Sievert, and Ernst Stern, drew scores of identifiable and highly praised stage pictures. Illustrations and photographs of their productions were reprinted in dozens of international art monthlies. Unfortunately, they published surprisingly few theoretical statements about them. Borrowing some of the terminology from Bernhard Diebold's influential study, Anarchie im Drama, that was used to describe models of pre-Expressionist and Expressionist dramas, German Expressionist performances can be subdivided into three general styles based on their expressive relationship to the audience – the creation of ecstasy through induction, association, or identification. These three categories are: the Geist performance, the Schrei performance, and the Ich performance. Like its Expressionist predecessor, Epic Theater was a distinctive avant-garde theatre genre that came of age in Weimar Germany during the 1920s. Both heralded left-wing communal doctrines and utilized modern technical means for their productions, but the Epic Theater defined itself as a correlative to Expressionism, in fact a Counter-Expressionist rebuke.
