ABSTRACT
Expressionism in the Austrian theatre to gain a currency as broad as in Germany; the reasons for this failure merit closer attention. This chapter comprises short case studies of important productions of plays that were written in the Expressionist mode, and which were classified accordingly by reviewers. Politically, Expressionism was classified as a left-wing phenomenon. As in Germany, there is a distinct overlap between Expressionism and Activism in Austria, principally through association with journals which served as the mouthpiece of radical, revolutionary forms of left-wing politics, embracing anarchists, Communists, and Marxists. The work is a sprawling, stylistically experimental and in places scurrilous play, dealing partly satirically, partly seriously with psychoanalytic and Expressionistic ideas of personal transformation, and overcoming duality and conflict within the self. The ethos and spirit of Expressionism as a credo of radical social change and ethical renewal against outmoded values and social systems, would seem automatically to align it with the political Left.
