Unmasking Frank Wedekind

Unfortunately due to availability this talk will not be BSL interpreted. A filmed version of the talk with captions will be available shortly after the event..

In 1906, audiences in Berlin finally had the opportunity to see the world premiere of Frank Wedekind’s first play, Spring Awakening, staged by the acclaimed director Max Reinhardt. Wedekind had waited fifteen years for the premiere of his play, whose treatment of teenage sexual awakening, pregnancy, suicide, and abortion had always been bound to provoke the censors. After all, Wedekind had made it clear that his sympathy lay with the play’s young characters, who have been failed by their parents and the rigid educational establishment. In Reinhardt’s production, he even appeared on stage in the final scene in the role of the Masked Man.

In her talk, Professor Laura Bradley explores the challenges that Spring Awakening posed to German society and culture, setting the play in the broader context of Wedekind’s biography, his conflicts with the law, and the theatrical culture of the time. She shows how Wedekind combines pathos with bitter irony, black humour, and lyricism, and asks what it was about his plays and performances that one of his most famous spectators – the young Bertolt Brecht – admired so much. Finally, she explores selected highlights from the performance history of Spring Awakening, showing how it has retained its power to speak to new audiences and contexts, well over a century after Wedekind’s death.

Professor Laura Bradley is Personal Chair of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh. Her major publications include Brecht and Political Theatre: ‘The Mother’ on Stage (2006), Cooperation and Conflict: GDR Theatre Censorship, 1961-1989 (2010), and Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (2011, co-edited with Karen Leeder). Her new book, Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship, will be appearing with Oxford University Press this summer. She is General Editor of German Monitor and a member of the Editorial Board of the Brecht Yearbook, and has worked with theatres and contributed to radio programmes on Brecht both nationally and internationally.