Although Oskar Kokoschka is better known as a painter than a dramatist, his six plays have earned him a place in theater history as one of the earliest writers of German expressionism. His Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (performed, 1909; published, 1916; translated as Murderer the Women's Hope, 1963) is often cited as the first German expressionist play. Intensity of emotion, telegraphic language, color and light symbolism, stark use of gesture and movement, and grotesque imagery, all of which became hallmarks of expressionism, are central to Kokoschka's early plays. Created as gestures of rebellion against what Kokoschka considered the stifling conventions both of the reigning bourgeois morality and of the Viennese Jugendstil (art nouveau) movement, Kokoschka's early plays and paintings aroused much controversy and criticism. In his dramas Kokoschka set out to break down traditional theatrical conventions, particularly the pre-dominant realism, just as in his paintings he sought to break...