Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words

Although often dismissed as a minor offshoot of the better-known German movement, expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism. Situating expressionism within the context of early twentieth-century American culture, Walker demonstrates how playwrights who wrote in this mode were responding both to new communications technologies and to the perceived threat they posed to the embodied act of meaning. At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.

Author: Julia A. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 02/19/2009
Pages: 316
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.71d
ISBN: 9780521108911

About the Author
Walker, Julia A.: - Julia Walker is Assistant Professor of English and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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