From Morn to Midnight (With Photographs)

Georg Kaiser, a German dramatist, has published some fifteen plays since 1911, twelve of which appeared during the World War I. Of these "Von Morgens bis Mitternachts" (1916) or From Morn to Midnight performed in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt, is here translated.

The author has been called an "expressionist," and is by way of being considered as the founder of a new dramatic school; doubtless because the need is felt to describe succinctly an art, which consists in a series of graphic, gestures, like a vigorous clenching of the smooth palm of actuality. It is true that Georg Kaiser brings a new method into the theatre. His singular economy of words is as it were the obverse of his lively but disciplined invention; and while these qualities have made the task of translation no simpler, they will do something to establish the international or non-national character of the work.

To the most-unfriendly gaze Georg Kaiser will appear to be a link between the three-dimensional stage and the screen, and a portent therefore not to be despised. But others who look deeper will read in the movement of his nameless hurrying throng of characters the poet's reflection of a universal gesture, and in their faces his image of a common unrest.