Up and Down Diotima's Staircase: Space and Metaphysics in Symbolist and Expressionist Theatre

Abstract

The Staircase is particularly resonant as a meeting place of metaphysics and theatrical practice. In this paper I use the framework provided by ‘Diotima’s staircase’ – a concept from Plato’s Symposium – to examine the relationship between theatre and metaphysics at the turn into the twentieth century, a time when shifting metaphysical positions both explicitly and implicitly drove Symbolist and Expressionist theatrical experimentation. I argue that this experimentation involved a turning away from Symbolism’s neo-Platonic focus on noumena towards Expressionism’s belief in the value of phenomena, and that this shift was especially evident in the way that Symbolists and Expressionists dealt with the arrangement of bodies, objects and light in space. I focus specifically on the transformation of Symbolism’s use of the staircase as a metaphor in paintings to Expressionism’s use of actual, three-dimensional flights of stairs and multiple-level stage floors in the theatre.