German Playwright Research Articles

Мольер на татарской сцене

In the process of the formation of the Tatar national dramatic art and the formation of the Tatar theatre, Russian and foreign classics played a significant role. The Tatar theatre turned to Western drama from the first years of its existence. Of the vast world dramatic heritage, the plays of Shakespeare, Schiller and Moliere have proven to be in particular demand. In terms of the number of appeals in this triad of the greats, Moliere is in third place, however, he is not inferior to the English and German playwrights in terms of importance for the development of the Tatar theatrical culture. Moliere stood at its origins; his plays were staged in three pre-revolutionary troupes “Sayar”, “Nur” and “Shirkat”. The French playwright made a significant influence on the formation of the comedy genre line of the young Tatar theatre. Moliere's plays remain on his posters to this day. The article examines the reception of Moliere's dramaturgy by the Tatar theatre at various stages of its development.

Translating Simon Stone’s Radical Rewritings into German

Translation (and rewriting) has been central to Simon Stone’s artistic practice since his first major directing success, an adaptation of the play Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) by the German playwright Frank Wedekind. This article begins with a brief introduction to Stone’s work, before exploring differing approaches to adapting and rewriting canonical plays in Australia and Germany. It then turns to theoretical approaches to the translation of theatre, before focusing on the process of translation in reference to four plays by Stone that the author has translated into German: Die Orestie (The Oresteia), Yerma, Die Wildente (The Wild Duck), and Unsere Zeit (Our Time).

Was Rolf Hochhuth's Play, The Deputy , the Result of a KGB [Plot]? Assessing a Conspiracy Theory

Abstract: This article seeks to debunk a conspiracy theory regarding the origins of the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth's incendiary play from 1963, The Deputy , which denounced Pope Pius XII for his alleged silence about German crimes in the Holocaust. According to these conspiracy theories, this play's success was the result of a masterstroke by Soviet intelligence, which had infiltrated the Vatican and stolen documents from the Vatican archives. By examining letters and correspondence pertaining to the play's origins, including its original drafts, this article argues that this conspiracy theory is chronologically implausible. Hochhuth's own account of the play's origins remains more or less correct, some inaccurate details notwithstanding.

The craft of acting as a pedagogical model for living a flourishing life in a world of tensions and contradictions

In this paper, I explore German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s conception of the art of acting, and his views on the new actor’s conduct towards their craft, as a pedagogical model for Brechts’ broader view on how we should live our lives. Drawing on his key writings – most importantly, his famous street scene essay – I will show that Brecht’s conception of the theory-practice connection in his approach to actor training/acting bears some deeper insight into Brecht’s conception of the art of living a flourishing life. The new actor is called to develop a conduct of careful observation and imitation of human action, one that is marked by the pleasure and lightness of exploring the contradictory workings of the social world. By placing the actor’s craft at the heart of his educational philosophy, Brecht invites us (the audience) into the theatre as a pedagogical space. Here, not unlike Brecht’s actors, we are summoned to hone our ability to boldly engage with a complex world of human actions and ideas. Brecht maintains that there resides an intellectual as well as sensual delight in being challenged to not simply accept theatre’s presentations as ‘truth’; instead, we are to learn to ‘weigh up’, ‘test’, and ‘improvise’ joyfully with theatre’s proposed ideas and practices—so that we may find out if they serve, or hinder, the creation of a larger flourishing life (beyond the theatre): a life in which we can move together, pleasurably.

The Play “Mother” by M. Gorky – B. Brecht on Broadway (1935): World Fame and Failure

The author examines the only production of Maxim Gorky’s novel “Mother” in the USA, which was adapted by Bertolt Brecht and staged by the leading Left-wing theatre of New York – Theatre Union. A brief description of the Union’s stage activity is given. The process of exporting the work to the USA and the role of the Communist International (Comintern) structures in this process are investigated. The history of artistic confrontation of American authors of the production and German playwright, who arrived from over the ocean to supervise it is considered in the paper. As a result of the research of how the production was being made, as well as how it was perceived by Broadway spectators it is possible to conclude that the realistic aesthetics and psychological insight of Gorky was more recognizable to the American producers than Brecht’s epic theatre. The analysis of the “Mother” production is aimed at expanding the views of Russian writer’s works as well as to consider the problem of familiarization of epic theatre, the Brecht’s dramatic composition by American theater-lovers. This research is based on archival materials and hard-to-access foreign sources.

Louise or Ferdinand? Exploring the protagonists of Love and Intrigue using social network analysis

Abstract Love and Intrigue is an outstanding work by the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller. This work was initially titled Louise Millerin, which was changed to Love and Intrigue before its premiere. The title Louise Millerin indicates the importance of the female character Louise in the drama. However, is Louise the real protagonist of the drama? Existing research provided no definitive answer to this question. Scholars have not agreed on who the protagonist is in the drama and how to quantify the prominence of the character. To address these issues, this study adopts Social Network Analysis (SNA) to visualize the character network, quantify the centrality of the characters, and perform cluster analysis of the characters in Love and Intrigue. The results indicate that Ferdinand displays the highest prominence and has higher stability regarding centrality than Louise. We explore possible reasons behind the findings. First, the highlighting of the male character Ferdinand may reflect male dominance in the eighteenth-century Germany. Second, Schiller incorporated his personal experiences and emotional preferences into the writing of the drama, leading to his favor of Ferdinand. Third, Schiller may have also been influenced by the style of previous German playwrights. By applying SNA to literary research, this study presents a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the characters in Love and Intrigue and contributes to the research on Schiller’s works.

SONGS FROM BERTOLT BRECHT’S THE THREEPENNY OPERA: FUNCTIONING WITHIN THE DRAMATIC TEXT AND BEYOND IT

The history of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera ("Die Dreigroschenoper", 1928) reception has been used to analyze the literary and musical genre of song, its specificity for the German cultural space of the time, attachment to the new American and long-standing German song tradition, its dependence on the manner of performance, voice performability, gesture character and aesthetic requirements of epic theatre. Based on the theoretical considerations of the German playwright and his own experience of performing, songs are viewed both as an element of "play with music" with an emphasis on their innovative functioning within the text and as independent art phenomena which played an essential role in popularizing The Threepenny Opera in general and its specific ideas and ways of their implementation in particular. A significant characteristic of Brecht's songs has been highlighted – their focus on impacting the public, which resulted in their great popularity. In this respect, a connection with the aesthetic experience of street musicians should be mentioned as the founding element in the aesthetics of Brecht's songs, with an accent on the link with jazz as a popular performative art; on the importance of the voice of performer, which was supposed to reflect interactions with the author, character, and composer; on the masterful music created by Kurt Weill for the songs. A new link between text and music, defined by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill as "gestic music", has been characterized. A claim is made that songs like texts designed for singing, where the form and language are aimed at making an impact on the listener, which serve as an attraction in the general performance, work successfully due to relevance, ballad nature, cognizability, repetition, external simplicity and even banality, aphoristic nature, satiricalness, indexicality and performability of the ideas they contain. Analysis of the most popular songs ("Mack the Knife", "Pirate Jenny") involves ideas of the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Ernst Bloch.

Мотивный анализ драмы Г. Л. Вагнера «Детоубийца»

The aim of this study is to reveal the features of the motif structure of the drama “The Child Killer” (1776) by Heinrich Leopold Wagner (1747-1779). The scientific novelty of our study lies in the fact that we turn to the unexplored aspect of the drama of the German playwright, whose creative work has been little studied. The paper provides an analysis of researchers’ views on the motifs and their typology. The authors study the motifs of the drama by H. L. Wagner, classify and consider them from the point of view of idyllic and anti-idyllic discourse, which helps to identify the specifics of the artistic world of this work. As a result of the study, the authors of the article came to the conclusion that the same motif can be either free and dynamic, or connected and static, depending on which character it is associated with. In addition, the same motif (for example, food or its absence) can be both idyllic and anti-idyllic. These motifs demonstrate the ability to transform and deform. In the leitmotif of the ordeal, which is always dynamic, the authors identified 4 stages, namely: the isolation of the hero from the social environment, from a certain locus, metaphorical death, the resurrection of the hero.

The Unmasking of the “Second Kotzebue”: Background to a Spy Scandal 1831

In 1818–1819, a high-profile spy scandal broke out in Germany. The renowned German playwright August von Kotzebue was declared a “Russian spy” and murdered as a “traitor to the Fatherland” amidst a tide of rising anti-Russian sentiment. Twelve years later, in 1831, the publicist Harro Paul Harring initiated a similar press campaign against the poet Carl Friedrich von Schweitzer de Schweigrois, also denounced as a “Russian spy”, an “enemy of the German nation”, and a “second Kotzebue”, against the backdrop of the suppression of the Polish Uprising by the Russian Empire. In the present study, the author considers the spy scandal of 1831 not only as an attempt by Harro Harringa to recreate the 1819 scenario in similar political circumstances, but also as an example of purposeful inflaming of anti-Russian sentiments in the wake of the initiation of public hysteria associated with the search for external and internal enemies of the “German nation” in the context of political processes within Germany. To study the subject, which has never been addressed in the historiography before, the author analyses the sources that have not been consulted before, namely the publications for 1830–1831 in the central and regional German press, primarily of the Kingdom of Saxony and the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, which covered the scandal with the exposure of the “Russian spy” von Schweitzer de Schweigrois, eyewitness accounts, correspondence and memoirs of Harro Harring, as well as a number of indirect sources to reconstruct the biography of his opponent, appointed by German society to the role of “the second Kotzebue”.

페터 바이스 초기 연극 『보험』의 매체 연출과 감각성에 관하여

The purpose of this study is to examine the directing techniques of the German playwright Peter Weiss. Weiss' documentary theater theory is well known in the field of Korean theater, but there have been few theoretical discussions on his plays. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the overall aesthetic theory of Weiss plays. Weiss was influenced by the historical avant-garde of the early 20th century. He created his own stage production theory by working in multiple media across paintings, prose, films, and plays. He also performed a total play that stimulates not only sight and hearing but also smell by combining his film aesthetics. In particular, the early work Insurance was a sensuous media play influenced by surrealist films, which laid the foundation for the aesthetics of Weiss directing. Therefore, this paper analyzes the stage production method using film techniques, focusing on Weiss' early play Insurance. First, this paper explores the unique principles and methods of stage reproduction of Weiss, and next, examines the function of media production in relation to sensory expression. The finding of the research suggests a new possibility of how the problems of sense and politics, which have been explained only aesthetically in the play, can actually cause an effect between the actor and the audience. This study demonstrates how senses function politically in Insurance by taking philosophical and neuroscience views beyond aesthetics. The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the media production method of Insurance and the sense, revealing another way of resistance from the protest performance of documentary plays in Weiss's political drama.

“Svitrigailo, Grand Duke of Lithuania, or Supplement to histories of Lithuanian, Russian, Polish-Prussian” : Translation and Publication of Work of August Kotzebue in Russian Empire

The issue of the history of the translation into Russian of the historical work of the German playwright August Kotzebue “Svitrigailo, the Grand Duke of Lithuania”, which was published in 1835, when the name of the famous German author had already become a sign of bad literary taste, and his works ceased to be published. For the first time, the study introduces into scientific circulation materials from several archives that store documents that allow us to draw conclusions about why Kotzebue’s essay on the history of Lithuania and Poland has been lying on the shelf of the censorship department for more than a decade. The results of the study showed that the manuscript could not be allowed for publication for a long time, not because of the scandal around the tragic death of its author, and not because of the new heroized interpretation of the image of Svitrigailo. The real reason for oblivion was the additions (documents from the Königsberg archive) with which Kotzebue supplied his work. The author of the article reports that, among various historical materials, three papal bulls were presented at the end of the manuscript, related to the project of a possible reunification of the Latin and Greek churches. It was these documents that delayed the publication of Kotzebue’s work in Russian. The archival materials involved show that the censorship of the first quarter of the 19th century considered the dissemination of materials related to the issue of unification of churches dangerous for Russian society.

Now

Now

From the History of the Literary Activity
 of Andreas Saks, a Russian and German Writer:
 The Preparation of His Schwanks for Publication in Russian
 (1960–1970)

Andreas Saks (1903–1983), a Russian (Soviet) ethnic German playwright, prose writer and poet has been one of the most well-known authors of prosaic schwanks in Russian German literature. The article is the first effort to describe how he prepared his schwanks for publication in Russian.
 In the 1960–1970s, he lived and worked first in Astrakhan, and then in Tiraspol, he wrote and published his schwanks in German. His first publications appeared as a rule on the pages of Soviet German newspapers. Thus, in the conditions of Soviet post-war and post-Stalin reality, he sought, firstly, to retain
 schwanks as a genre of German folk literature and, secondly, to help Russian Germans devoid of their original nationality in the USSR to maintain their national and cultural identity.
 Moreover, Andreas Saks was eager to expand his readership by publishing his schwanks in Russian. While preparing these works for book publications for numerous Soviet readers, he himself translated them into Russian. In his introduction to these editions he aimed to acquaint Soviet readers of different nationalities with a «schwank» as a unique phenomenon of German literature and
 culture as well as its genre peculiarities.

Death as Performance in the Conversations between Heiner Müller and Alexander Kluge

Abstract The subject of this essay is the East German dramatist Heiner Müller (1929–1995) focusing on his role of inter­viewee and analysing his 24 conversations for the West German television with the director and producer Alexander Kluge (1932–). The conversations took place between 1988 and 1995 and are presented, in a shortened and modi­fied version, in the two volumes edited by Kluge, Ich schulde der Welt einen Toten (1995) and Ich bin ein Landvermesser (1996). Indeed, Kluge is the first and only interviewer who turns Müller the individual into both a subject and an object, not only of recent historical events, but also of art itself. In this peculiar context, Mein Rendezvous mit dem Tod (1995), one of the last conversations between the two German artists, represent a unique case, in which Müller performs his illness and his own death in front of the cameras, thus becoming the protagonist of his last drama.

The Vatican in World War II: Dynamics and New Directions in Western Historiography

The article examines the historiography of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, especially the phase that fell during the Second World War. Accusations that the Pope had not publicly condemned the crimes of Fascism and Nazism emerged in Soviet historiography shortly after the war and were faintly echoed by radical historiography in European countries. At the same time, an apologetic trend emerges in historiography. The situation changed dramatically with the publication and production of the play Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, A Christian Tragedy also published in English as The Representative) by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, in which the Pope is accused of remaining silent in the face of the Nazi crimes. It marked the beginning of a critical trend in historiography. In historiography, a heated debate between the critical and apologetic ‘schools’ has been termed the “Pius War”. The revival of the critical movement has usually been associated with various politicised events such as the beatification process of Pius XII at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and a new step in that direction in 2009, namely the declaration of Pius XII venerable by Pope Benedict XVI, etc. At the same time, the introduction of new archival documents into scholarly discourse (in particular, the opening for academic examination of the collections of Pius XI and Pius XII in the Vatican Archives) has led to an enormous expansion and diversification of the source base. Studies have also demonstrated the need for a more active exploration and contextualisation of the policies of the Holy See during the war years. All this contributes to a more balanced and objective appraisal of these matters on the part of historians and political scientists.

РЕЦЕПЦИЯ ДРАМАТУРГИИ МАКСА ДРЕЙЕРА В РУССКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЕ В НАЧАЛЕ XX В. (1900-1914)

The article deals with the socio-cultural peculiarities of the perception of the German writer Max Dreyer in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. The research focuses on the theatrical discourse in the magazines and newspapers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The study showed that the author, little known today, enjoyed wide popularity in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. His plays were performed in many theaters, both in the capital and in regions. A quick and lively response to foreign theatrical novelties and their transfer to the Russian stage was a general cultural trend of the era. This is the era of the rise of public interest in the theater and in contemporary Russian and Western drama novelties. The vector of socio-cultural development is what predetermined the demand for the German playwright in Russia. In Germany Dreyer’s most popular play was “The Trial Candidate”, in Russia, “The Seventeen Year Olds”. One of the most important factors in its success was that Dreyer’s work fell in line with major trends and preferences in the theatrical repertoire. His interest in the question of women, the problems of contradiction between dream and reality, the theme of a pure soul suffering from lies and social conventions was common

Образ героя в «королевских» драмах А. Стриндберга

The article focuses on A. Strindberg’s six historical dramas about Swedish rulers: “Gustav Vasa” (1899), “Erik XIV” (1899), “Gustav Adolf” (1900), “Charles XII” (1901), “Queen Christina” (1901), and “Gustav III” (1902). Strindberg’s late historical plays reflect not so much the true historical events as the author’s world outlook, his personal perception of history and modernity. The influence of Shakespeare’s chronicles in these plays is obvious, however, Strindberg went further with the modernization of history than the English playwright. The Swedish kings appeared as complex individuals, they conversed in modern colloquial language and for the first time in Swedish theatre history became readily understandable by the contemporary audience. The realistic style of these plays is penetrated by the symbolical “higher” reality, which makes them close in style to Strindberg’s “A Dream Play” and “To Damascus”, which were both written in the same period. The action of these historical dramas revolves around the protagonist. His complex inner world is the playwright’s focus, which affects not only the development of the plot, but also the dramatic form. Through an analysis of the main characters, the article reveals the main themes and dramaturgical principles of Strindberg’s late historical drama, which influenced the further development of this genre, as well as the works of German playwrights of the expressionism movement.

What Brecht experienced at the Plärrer in Augsburg.

The article deals with important biographical aspects in the work of Bertolt Brecht.The main focus of the study is on the early period of the writer's life in Augsburg.The influence of folk street celebrations on the formation of aesthetic views of theyoung artist is considered. Bertolt Brecht's unknown or little-known publicationsin the Augsburg newspapers of 1914-1921 on the peculiarities of moderntheatrical art are analyzed. A detailed analysis of Bertolt Brecht's theatricalreviews gives an idea of the formation of the future playwright, as well asexpands the idea of the spheres of influence on his creative personality in hisyouth. The decisive importance for the author-beginner of folk street celebrationsas a platform for observation of the peculiarities of human behavior, for the studyof different types of people. The influence of sport as a popular and massspectacle on the formation of Bertolt Brecht's ideas about a new kind of theatricaland dramatic art that will be popular with modern audiences is also considered.The article offers the reader new, still unknown facts from the life and work of thefamous German playwright and poet.

Address of implicatures in dramatic discourse

The article analyses utterances with implicatures in the character speech in German dramatic discourse based on the play “The Money is in the Bank” by German dramatist Curth Flatow, which presents the situational type of dramatic dialogue and imitation of colloquial speech. Address of implicatures is the direction of the speaker's perlocutionary goal to convey the implicature to the addressee, depending on the level of communication. The speaker's orientation to the addressee in intending implicatures correlates with two levels of communication in dramatic discourse outside of its stage implementation: horizontal (communication of characters) and vertical (communication between the author and the reader). Depending on the communicative attitude of the speaker and the level of communication, the address of implicatures demonstrates five types. The first two types relate to horizontal communication, the third to vertical, the fourth and fifth suggest double intending of the implicature at two levels. The first type of address is the most frequent: in his or her utterance, character 1 (the speaker) conveys the implicature to the addressee / group of addressees (character 2 / characters 1, 2, 3 ...). The second type of address concerns indirect verbal communication at the level of horizontal communication: in his or her utterance, character 1 (the speaker) conveys the implicature not to the direct addressee (character 2), but to the indirect (character 3). The third type of address involves only vertical communication: the author conveys the implicature to the reader in the utterance of character 1, directed at character 2; there may be several target characters. In the case of the fourth type of addressing, a double intending of implicature occurs: character 1 (the speaker) conveys the implicature to character 2 (addressee) in his or her utterance, and at the same time the author conveys the implicature to the reader in the same utterance. The fifth type of address is also a double intending of the implicature, but with the involvement of the indirect addressee: in his or her utterance, character 1 (the speaker) conveys the implicature not to the direct addressee (character 2), but to the indirect (character 3), and at the same time the author conveys the implicature to the reader in the same utterance.

An Age of Transition: Restaging Brecht’s Encounter with Beijing Opera

The scene is Moscow, 1935. A who’s who of the European avant-garde has gathered to see the work of their foremost Chinese colleague: the Beijing opera master Mei Lanfang. Among them is the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who sees in Mei’s performances the aesthetic effect he aims to develop in his own work: an effect he will soon call the ‘alienation effect.’ In 1936, Brecht pens his famous essay “On Chinese Acting,” in which he argues—approvingly—that Chinese theatre alienates the actor and audience from a play’s narrative by smashing the fourth wall and championing symbolism over realism. But did Brecht get it right? In this essay, I examine this remarkable episode in global theatre history. I argue that Brecht misunderstood Beijing opera’s theatre aesthetics, yet nonetheless meaningfully engaged with Chinese culture. A renewed encounter between Brechtian theatre and Beijing opera, I suggest, opens up intriguing possibilities in dramatic performance and theatre aesthetics.