Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T06:41:26.753Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Late Expressionist performance in Berlin: the Emblematic mode

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2009

David F. Kuhns
Affiliation:
Geneva College, Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

THE EMBLEMATIC ACTOR

The acting of Expressionist performers such as those in Schreyer's Kampfbühne ensemble resembled the evocative art of the French Symbolists. It created images which signaled such a multiplicity of possible meanings that audience reading of the performances was unavoidably idiosyncratic. For the purposes of this final chapter, therefore, I should like to draw a theoretical distinction between this kind of Expressionist performance and yet a third type which I shall call “emblematic stage Expressionism.” The typically denotative imagery mobilized in this mode drastically curtailed ambiguity by reinforcing a single dominant idea. Denotative signification is most clearly operative in allegorical representation. The actors in the medieval morality play Everyman, for instance, do not play characters but rather abstract moral ideas. Assuming a production which stresses the play's allegorical quality, the actors must create images which denote those ideas. The images thus created become emblems of these ideas; and the aggregate of such images becomes a macroemblem of the whole production – the composite emblem, that is, of the production's dominant idea. In Everyman, the embodiment of the title character himself could most readily function as the macroemblem, into which all the other emblematic significations – such as those denoting the Seven Deadly Sins, Death, and so forth – are subsumed.

The abstractionism of the late Expressionist theatre in Berlin utilized this allegorical method of reinforcing a predominant idea through the emphatic coordination of all production elements.

Type
Chapter
Information
German Expressionist Theatre
The Actor and the Stage
, pp. 173 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×