Spring Awakening: a Children's Tragedy (Frühlings Erwarchen: eine Kindertragödie), Frank Wedekind

Wedekind

BIOGRAPHY

-    1864: conceived in CA, born Benjamin Franklin Wedekind to a doctor and an actress, and brought up in Switzerland


-    separated from father/family and joined cabaret culture in Munich, Germany, founding the Eleven Executioners (Franzen viii)

- 1895: Earth Spirit


- 1904: Pandora's Box

- 1906: Married actress Tilly Newes, also a star of his Lulu plays


-     1918: Rock star reception at death (caused by removal of appendix) (Franzen ix)


-    1923: Spring Awakening, the most biographical of his plays, translated into English


PRODUCTION HISTORY

-    Wedekind paid for publication in 1891, but it wasn’t perf. until 20 Nov. 1906 in Berlin at Kammerspiele, “a newly-opened experimental theatre,” directed by Max Reinhardt (Skrine 76)


-    Produced with newest stage techniques – revolving stage, realistic sets, gauzes (Skrine 77), and Wedekind acted in it as well--as the Masked Man (Wedekind 80-83)

- 1917 censorship in NYC: after 1 matinee, a shuts down a new production ("Court Bars Sex Play")


-    Prod. in London at Royal Court Theatre in 1963, Tom Osborn; rejected by National Theatre in 1965; staged in 1974 by National Endowment

- Won a Tony for Best Musical, NYC in 2007


Palma Vecchio, Venus
1915 Austrian postcard version of Palma Vecchio, Venus (Wedekind 39)


Works Cited

"Court Bars Sex Play." The New York Times. 3 May 1917.

Franzen, Jonathan. "Introduction." Spring Awakening: a Children's Tragedy. NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2007. Print.

Skrine, Peter. "Frank Wedekind." Hauptmann, Wedekind, and Schnitzler. NY: St. Martin's, 1989. 72-82.

Vecchio, Palma. Venus. Oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, 1520. <http://www.ansichtskartenhandel.at/_py-Ansichtskarten-Motive-Thematik-Kuenstlerkarten-Nach-Verlage-sortiert-Stengel-Co-29176-Ruhende-Venus-Palma-Vecchio-Nude/a-324688/> Web. Accessed March 2010.

Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening. Trans. J. Franzen. NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2007. Print.

W. C. Nielsen May 2012, with research assistance from Michelle T. Fernandes