August Strindberg

August Strindberg's One-Act Plays

A Selection

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

To most English-language readers and theatre goers, Strindberg is mainly known for naturalistic plays such as 'Miss Julie' and 'The Father', but the dramatic production of Sweden's national playwright is infinitely richer and more extensive than these would suggest. This volume presents four of Strindberg's lesser known one act plays, 'The Bond', 'Facing Death', 'The Outlaw' and 'Simoom', written between 1871 and 1892, which showcase Strindberg's remarkable range. 'The Bond' and 'Facing Death', which fall at the end of the time span, are familiarly naturalistic plays set in contemporary European settings which demonstrate Strindberg's provocative engagement with contentious issues of his day. The early experiment 'The Outlaw', however, takes place in the frigid landscapes of the Viking north, drawing heavily on the style of Icelandic sagas. In Simoom, written in 1889, a practically gothic narrative transports us to the scorching deserts of French colonised Algeria, allowing us to observe the beginnings of Strindberg's experimental, mystical phase which culminated in 'A Dream Play'. Different as the four plays are, however, when read together they form a thematic unity, revealing the beating heart of Strindberg's creativity, the issue at the core of his writing: love as a war eternally waged man and woman, husband and wife, children and parents and individuals and society. The four plays were translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé, Anna Holmwood, John K Mitchinson, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Anna Tebelius and Nichola Smalley.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Norvik Press
• Seitenzahl: 128
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. Oktober 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 198mm x 129mm x 7mm
• Gewicht: 145g
• ISBN-13: 9781870041935
• ISBN-10: 1870041933
• Artikelnr.: 36760197

Autorenporträt

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish dramatist, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter. During his four-decade career, Strindberg created more than sixty plays and over thirty books of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics, frequently drawing directly on his own experiences. He was a daring innovator and iconoclast who experimented with a variety of dramatic methods and objectives, including naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, as well as his foreshadowing of expressionist and surrealist theatrical tactics. Strindberg pioneered new approaches to dramatic action, vocabulary, and visual composition beginning with his early work. In 1872, the Royal Theatre rejected his first major play, Master Olof; it was not until 1881, at the age of thirty-two, that its premiere at the New Theatre provided him with his theatrical breakthrough. In his plays The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), and Creditors (1889), he created naturalistic dramas that - building on the established accomplishments of Henrik Ibsen's prose problem plays while rejecting their use of the structure of the well-made play - responded to Emile Zola's manifesto "Naturalism in the Theatre" (1881) and the example set by André Antoine's newly established Théâtre Libre (opened 1887).