Plays from German-Speaking Countries on American University Stages 1973-1988

Abstract

The average theatregoer in a German-speaking country will have more than an occasional opportunity to see a well-translated American play. If one peruses the German theatre monthly, Theater heute, one discovers references to and reviews of plays by Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and others. Over an extended period of time, the German theatregoer can gain some insight into American culture via these play productions. What about the American theatregoer? Can he/she attend German plays in translation in the United States and thereby hope to gain some understanding of German, Austrian or Swiss cultures? My survey shows that there is indeed much German theatre activity in this country today. However, whereas the German theatregoer will see an American play on a professional stage, the American theatregoer will most likely attend the performance of a German play at a college or university. Since the German professional stage is not as much a commercial enterprise as its American counterpart, a German stage can and will produce more unknown and foreign plays than the American stage, which simply cannot afford this risk. According to statistics released in the March '88 issue of Fachdienst Germanistik, only 18% of plays performed in 1987 on the 142 professional stages in West Germany, Austria and Switzerland were plays by dramatists from the Germanspeaking areas. This statistic documents a substantial interest in foreign play productions. In 1986, for instance, the most popular plays were Hamlet and Tartuffe. Also noteworthy is the fact that Brecht, who, together with Shakespeare, has dominated the German stage for the last 15 years, had twice as many performances in 1987 as Schiller or Goethe and almost three times as