PISCATOR, ERWIN

born Dec. 17, 1893, Ulm, Ger. died March 30, 1966, Starnberg, W.Ger. theatrical producer and director famed for his ingenious Expressionistic staging techniques; the originator of the epic theatre style later developed by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Having studied at the Knig school of dramatic art and the university, Piscator began as a volunteer at the Hoft Theater; he became in turn an actor and director. Working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic (191933), Piscator frankly used the theatre to convey radical political instruction. Though not a communist, he sympathized at the time with the German working-class parties. A bold innovator, he used films and newsreels to enlarge landscapes and convey mass events, and he employed many optical, acoustical, and mechanical devices to create an experience of total theatre. His passion for machinery could be self-defeating, for sometimes the blaring loudspeakers, flashing lights, air-raid sirens, and revolving sets prevented the viewers from getting the message. In exile during World War II, he headed the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in New York City, from 1939 to 1951, when he returned to West Germany as director of West Berlin's Volksbhne. He continued to produce sensational works, such as Rolf Hochhuth's Deputy, a study of the role of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi era, and The Investigation by Peter Weiss, dealing with the mass murders at Auschwitz concentration camp. John Willett's The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics in the Theatre was published in 1979.