Spring Awakening: A Play

Wedekind, Frank

ISBN 10: 086547978X / ISBN 13: 9780865479784

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007

Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G086547978XI5N00

Synopsis:

From Jonathan Franzen, bestselling author of The Corrections and Crossroads, comes his razor-sharp translation of Frank Wedekind's major modern play, Spring Awakening.

Featuring an introduction by Franzen.

First performed in Germany in 1906, Frank Wedekind's controversial play Spring Awakening closed after one night in New York in 1917 amid charges of obscenity and public outrage. For the better part of the twentieth century Wedekind's intense body of work was largely unpublished and rarely performed. Yet the play's subject matter--teenage desire, suicide, abortion, and homosexuality--is as explosive and important today as it was a century ago. Spring Awakening follows the lives of three teenagers, Melchior, Moritz, and Wendl, as they navigate their entry into sexual awareness. Unlike so many works that claim to tell the truth of adolescence, Spring Awakening offers no easy answers or redemption.

Today, more than a hundred years after the play's first performance, a new musical version of this essential modern masterpiece is being hailed as the "best new musical . . . in a generation" (John Heilpern, The New York Observer). Franzen's rendition of the text--for so long poorly served in English--is unique in capturing the bizarre and inimitable comic spirit that animates almost every line of this unrelentingly tragic play. There couldn't be a better time for this thrilling, definitive new translation.

About the Authors: Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) had a seminal effect on the development of twentieth-centruy German drama. His plays portray a society riven by the demands of lust and greed, and his powerful writing continues to disturb and shock; his plays were still being refused a performing licence in Britain in the 1960s.

Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Crossroads, and five works of nonfiction, including Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Spring Awakening: A Play
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Fair
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket