SOURCE: Sullivan, Lawrence. “Arthur Schnitzler's The Bridal Veil at the American Laboratory Theatre.” Dance Research Journal 25, no. 1 (spring 1993): 13-20.

In the following essay, Sullivan explains the ways in which Schnitzler's Der Schleier der Pierrette allowed stage directors to break away from realist conventions and explore abstract and symbolist theatrical effects.

Whatever the particular intentions of the playwright, Arthur Schnitzler's Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette), a ballet-pantomime first performed in Dresden, January 22, 1910, with music by Ernst von Dohnányi, became, in the first year of its composition, a vehicle of avant-garde experimentalists on the Russian theatrical scene. In October 1910, Vsevolod Meyerhold used Schnitzler's ballet-pantomime for his own avant-garde interests in commedia dell'arte motifs, producing Columbine's Scarf (a variant title) at the House of Interludes in St. Petersburg. Three years later, in 1913, Alexander Tairov, as anti-Meyerholdean as he was anti-Stanislavskian, also staged a version of Der Schleier...