Expressionism

To Create the Essential Illusion Without Violating the Constitution

No real scene ever did look like a scene of the stage. That is true in greater or less degree whether the scene be a forest, waving like a set of green banners behind the proscenium, or a street in the Venetian ghetto of the Merchant of Venice, with every stick and stone and human being arranged with indefatigable precision by Belasco, king of realists. The spectator never can quite persuade himself that he is peeking through a chink in the fourth wall of the room, hiding behind a poison ivy vine in the woods, or bobbing about behind a wave on the ocean.

Every one but Belasco having been convinced of that, producing souls have been in a turmoil trying to decide just how to create the essential illusion without having to violate the Constitution every time a character is supposed to take a drink.

There are two solutions. The simplest is to shift the responsibility to the collective imagination of the audience. Drape the stage with silk curtains, put two chairs in front, twin beds in the rear, and page Mr. Avery Hopwood. Or (as in Dagmar, the sophisticated melodrama with Nazi mova), put three beach chairs on a yellow stage with a blue backdrop and call it the seashore. In Mary the 3rd, Rachel Crothers' humorous tragedy of incompatibility, the first two scenes are mounted only with draperies, a modicum of furniture, and off-stage music.

The other solution is "Expressionism," about which at present there is much alarmed twaddle. The only really fearsome thing about expressionism is its name--and an occasional crime (such as Lionel Barrymore's Macbeth last year) committed in its name.

The fundamental principle of expressionism is the representation not of the appearance of a scene, but its meaning. A characteristic instance was the Fifth Avenue scene in Eugene O'Neill's Hairy Ape. Jewels were to the misplaced stoker only tinsel; so the shop window was filled not with gems, but tinsel. The wealthy churchgoers appeared to him automatons; so a squeaky procession of masked automatons marched across the stage.

The most successful recent use of expressionism is in the Theatre Guild's production of Ibsen's astonishing poetic drama, Peer Gynt. Full-grown people live in dwarfed houses; deserts are indicated by a suggestion of sand; fjords, oceans, mountains become a pile of cubist rocks and a blue line on the backdrop.