Search results for ""Author August Strindberg""

August Strindberg's classic portrayals of secrets and lies, seduction and power – both written in the summer of 1888 – in brilliant new versions by Howard Brenton. Miss Julie begins as a flirtatious game between the daughter of a wealthy landowner and her father's manservant, and gradually descends, over the course of a long and sultry Midsummer's Eve, into a savage fight for survival. In Creditors, young artist Adolf is deeply in love with his new wife Tekla – but a chance meeting with a suave stranger shakes his devotion to the core. Passionate, dangerously funny, and enduringly perceptive, Strindberg considered this wickedly enjoyable black comedy his masterpiece. Both plays premiered in co-productions between Jermyn Street Theatre, London, and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, directed by Jermyn Street's Artistic Director Tom Littler.

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Play something kitty-cat-ish . . . sweet. Imagine I've died and you're galloping through fields.As their thirtieth wedding anniversary approaches, Alice and Edgar are locked in a bitter struggle. They've driven away their children and their friends. Their relationship is sustained by taunts and recriminations. When a newcomer breaks into the midst of the fray, their insular lives threaten to spin out of control.We're all just bodies and when we're dead we're worm food, but as long as your body keep going, flailing or thrashing about, we are duty bound to fight, to scratch and kick, until you're fucked. That's my philosophy. Laced with biting humour, The Dance of Death is August Strindberg's landmark drama about a marriage pushed to its limits, adapted in a thrilling new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The Dance of Death opened at the Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Theatre in May 2022 before going on UK tour in an Arcola Theatre, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Oxford Playhouse and Theatre Royal Bath Productions co-production.

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Wild and newly single, Julie throws a late night party. In the kitchen, Jean and Kristina clean up as the celebration heaves above them. Crossing the threshold, Julie initiates a power game with Jean. It descends into a savage fight for survival.Polly Stenham reimagines August Strindberg's Miss Julie in contemporary London.Julie premiered at the National Theatre, London, in May 2018.

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Caryl Churchill's spare and resonant version of Strindberg's enigmatic masterpiece. Written in 1901, a mysterious amalgam of Freud, Alice in Wonderland and Strindberg's own private symbolism, A Dream Play follows the logic of a dream: A young woman comes from another world to see if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. Characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant and a locked door becomes an obsessive recurrent image. As Strindberg wrote in his preface, he wanted 'to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.' This version of A Dream Play, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund, is by leading playwright Caryl Churchill. It was first performed in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre, London, in February 2005, in a production directed by Katie Mitchell, with additional material by Katie Mitchell and the company. Also included is an introduction by Caryl Churchill.

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This second volume of the great Swedish writer August Strindberg’s plays begins with To Damascus I (1898), the first of a trilogy. It mirrors his own departure from the naturalism he had explored in several of his earlier works, as he set forth on a spiritual odyssey. Crimes and Crimes (1899), from the beginning of his symbolist mode, is a lighter take on the themes in To Damascus I. The first of a two-part play, Dance of Death I (1900) depicts a dysfunctional marriage. A Dream Play (1901), which is one of Strindberg’s most influential, shows reality converted into a dream; many critics consider it his greatest play. In 1907, Strindberg founded the Intimate Theater in Stockholm; The Ghost Sonata (1907) and The Pelican (1907), which were written for its opening, are two examples of a chamber play, a genre that Strindberg helped to originate.

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Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Bored with her sheltered existence, Miss Julie attempts to seduce the footman, but gets far more than she bargained for... August Strindberg's classic naturalistic play Miss Julie was written in 1888, and first performed at Strindberg's experimental theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1889, despite being banned by the censor. This English version, translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish, is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series. The volume also includes Strindberg's Preface.

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A gripping new version of Strindberg's masterly, darkly hilarious depiction of the struggles and strains of marriage. Meet Edgar and Alice. Married for almost thirty years, theirs is a relationship of mutual explosive loathing. Strindberg's tale paints a compelling and bitterly funny portrait of a magnificently doomed couple, whose ongoing battle threatens not only their future, but that of their friends and children as well. Howard Brenton's Dances of Death includes both Part One and the rarely performed Part Two of this masterpiece of European theatre, condensed into a single two-act drama. The play premiered at the Gate Theatre, London, in May 2013.

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A new adaptation of Strindberg’s thrilling psychological drama, newly politically-charged in Amy Ng’s adaptation. It’s Chinese New Year in 1940s Hong Kong. Julie is the daughter of the island’s British Governor. With her father away for the weekend, Julie comes downstairs to join the servants as they party, initiating a sexually-charged power game with her father’s butler. What starts as a game descends into a fight for survival as sex, power, money and race collide on a hot night in the Pearl River Delta. This edition was published to coincide with the premiere at Storyhouse, Chester, in February 2020.

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Miss Julie (1888), written in a fortnight, was regarded by Strindberg as his masterpiece, 'the first naturalistic tragedy of the Swedish drama'. Shocking in subject-matter, revolutionary in technique, it was fiercely attacked on publication for immorality. On Midsummer Eve, Miss Julie, the daughter of a count, sleeps with her father's valet, Jean. The subsequent conflict between sexual passion and social position, which leads to her suicide, is presented with startling modernity. The play's premiere at Strindberg's experimental theatre in Denmark in 1889 was banned by the censor and its first public production three years later in Berlin aroused such protests that it was withdrawn after one performance. Miss Julie has since become one of Strindberg's most popular and frequently performed plays. Commentary and notes by David Thomas and Jo Taylor.

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Together in this volume are two plays by the Scandinavian geniuses of modern drama, which focus on a single theme–the reality of death. Translated and edited by Thaddeus L. Torp, this edition contains both August Strindberg's Ghost Sonata and Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken for performance and study and includes an introduction, a chronology of principal works and important events in the authors' lives, and a bibliography.

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