DON JUAN COMES BACK FROM THE WAR (DON JUAN KOMMT AUS DEM KRIEG): The anti-hero of the title returns from the front in a fervour of despair. The girl he is searching for has died and the romantic ideal he is trying to construct is opposed by endless recriminations from the succession of women he encounters. Don Juan Comes Back from the War was first performed in this translation at the National Theatre in 1978. FIGARO GETS DIVORCED (FIGARO LÄSST SICH SCHEIGEN): An aristocratic couple and their two servants are on the run from a revolution. Their fortunes rise and fall against a background of social and political upheaval. Figaro Gets Divorced was premiered in this translation at the Gate Theatre in 1990.
Written in exile while in flight from the Nazis, this dark, bizarre evocation of everyday life under fascism is available for the first time in thirty years. This last book by Ödön von Horváth, one of the 20th-century’s great but forgotten writers, is a dark fable about guilt, fate, and the individual conscience. An unnamed narrator in an unnamed country is a schoolteacher with “a safe job with a pension at the end of it.” But, when he reprimands a student for a racist comment, he is accused of “sabotage of the Fatherland,” and his students revolt. A murder follows, and the teacher must face his role in it, even if it costs him everything. Horváth’s book both points to its immediate context—the brutalizing conformity of a totalitarian state, the emptiness of faith in the time of the National Socialists—and beyond, to the struggles of individuals everywhere against societies that offer material security in exchange for the abandonment of one’s convictions. Reminiscent of Camus’ The Stranger in its themes and its style, Youth Without God portrays a world of individual ruthlessness and collective numbness to the appeals of faith or morality. And yet, a commitment to the truth lifts the teacher and a small band of like-minded students out of this deepening abyss. It’s a reminder that such commitment did exist in those troubled times—indeed, they’re what led the author to flee Germany, first for Austria, and then France, where he met his death in a tragic accident, just two years after the publication of Youth Without God. Long out of print, this new edition resurrects a bracing and still-disturbing vision. “Horváth was telling the truth. Furiously.” —Shalom Auslander
The Rhythm of Space and the Sound of Time examines the place of Chekhov's Technique in contemporary acting pedagogy and practice. Cynthia Ashperger answers the questions: What are the reasons behind the technique's current resurgence? How has this cohesive and holistic training been brought into today's mainstream acting training? What separates this technique from the other currently popular methods? Ashperger offers an analysis of the complex philosophical influences that shaped Chekhov's ideas about this psycho-physical approach to acting. Chekhov's five guiding principles are introduced to demonstrate how eastern ideas and practices have been integrated into this western technique and how they have continued to develop on both theoretical and practical levels in contemporary pedagogy, thereby rendering it intercultural. The volume also focuses on the work of several contemporary teachers of the technique associated with Michael Chekhov International Association (MICHA). Current teacher training is described as well as the different modes of hybridization of Chekhov's technique with other current methods. Contemporary practical experiments and some fifty exercises at both beginner and intermediate/advanced levels are presented through analysis, examples, student journals and case studies, delineating the sequences in which units are taught and specifying the exercises that differ from those in Chekhov's original writing. This book is for practitioners as well as students of the theatre.
Presents the details of director Stephen Daldry's work on the acclaimed play, "An Inspector Calls," in an attempt to reveal his intepretative approach to theater
This never-before translated work by a major yet overlooked mid-20th century writer is a brutally funny look at the human comedy on the eve of Europe's decent into Fascism. It tells the tale of a failed used car salesman who wants to live the high life, and so decides to travel by train from Munich to Barecelona to attend the World's Fair — in hopes of meeting a beautiful, rich woman who will provide for his every whim. It's a highly-stylized and, at times, raucously funny tale of the almost-absurd: a dark and satiric look at Europeans, and especially Germans, on the brink of cataclysm. Adrift in their acquisitive desires, they are vulnerable to the propaganda of the State — making this novel brilliantly foresightful in its understanding of politics and human nature at a crucial point in modern history. Ödön von Horváth’s scathing insight, in fact, led to his having to flee the very society he depicted when, living in Berlin, he drew the wrath of the Nazis. And yet this hilarious tour-de-force — written just after his escape, and just before his death in a tragic accident — eschews bitterness for rambunctious perseverance and compassion, and provides ample evidence of why von Horváth deserves renewed appreciation.
With the Austro-Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth as our guide, Christopher Hampton's witty and erudite play takes us on a tour of the sun-soaked boulevards of 1940s Los Angeles. Taking in such improbable residents as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and the Marx Brothers amongst others, it brilliantly serves to open up a neglected chapter of American cultural history, as the wry and embittered European émigrés find themselves amidst the materialistic razzle-dazzle of Hollywood. Tales from Hollywood premiered at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre, Los Angeles, 1982 and at the National Theatre, London, in 1983.
