Synopses & Reviews
Wedekind's play about adolescent sexuality is as disturbing today as when it was first produced. Spring Awakening was written in 1891 but had to wait the greater part of a century before it received its first complete performance in Britain, at the National Theatre in 1974. The production was highly praised, much of its strength deriving from this translation by Edward Bond and Elisabeth Bond Pablé. For this edition the translator, Edward Bond, has written a note on the play and a factual introduction to Wedekind's life and work. Frank Wedekind, born July 24, 1864, was a German actor and playwright. He lived in Switzerland (187284) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his Lulu” cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism. Wedekind's play about adolescent sexuality is as disturbing today as when it was first produced. Spring Awakening was written in 1891 but had to wait the greater part of a century before it received its first complete performance in Britain, at the National Theatre in 1974. The production was highly praised, much of its strength deriving from this translation by Edward Bond and Elisabeth Bond Pablé. For this edition the translator, Edward Bond, has written a note on the play and a factual introduction to Wedekind's life and work. "Scrupulously faithful both to Wedekind's irony and his poetry."The Times of London
Review
"Scrupulously faithful both to Wedekind's irony and his poetry."—The Times of London
Synopsis
Wedekind's play about adolescent sexuality is as disturbing today as when it was first produced. Spring Awakening was written in 1891 but had to wait the greater part of a century before it received its first complete performance in Britain, at the National Theatre in 1974. The production was highly praised, much of its strength deriving from this translation by Edward Bond and Elisabeth Bond Pablé. For this edition the translator, Edward Bond, has written a note on the play and a factual introduction to Wedekind's life and work.
Synopsis
Wedekind's play about adolescent sexuality is as disturbing today as when it was first produced. Spring Awakening was written in 1891 but had to wait the greater part of a century before it received its first complete performance in Britain, at the National Theatre in 1974. The production was highly praised, much of its strength deriving from this translation by Edward Bond and Elisabeth Bond Pablé. For this edition the translator, Edward Bond, has written a note on the play and a factual introduction to Wedekind's life and work.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxiii]-xxiv).
About the Author
Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was a journalist, advertising manager, secretary to a circus, cabaret artiste, satirist, convict and actor as well as the author of twenty-one plays, many of which reflect aspects of his extraordinary career. He paid for the publication of Spring Awakening (1891), though it was not staged till 1906. (In England it was banned from public performance until 1963.) Earth Spirit (1895), the first of his plays to be seen on stage (1898), introduced the sexually voracious Lulu, who also figured in Pandora's Box (1904) and subsequently in Alban Berg's opera (Lulu, 1935) and in Peter Barnes' conflation of the two plays seen in England in 1970. Other notable plays include The Marquis of Keith (1900; British premiere, 1974), King Nicolo (1902), Castle Wetterstein (1910) and Franziska (1912). Wedekind was greatly admired by Brecht, and his satiric songs still have considerable bite.