Spring Awakening: A Play
About this ebook
With its scenes of pubescent angst, sexual outspokenness, rape and homosexuality, the play still, more than one hundred years after it was first staged, has the power to shock. Ted Hughes's rendition lends the dialogue a particularly modern terseness and bite, drawing out all the erotic energy of the original.
About the author
Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was born in Hanover. He became a journalist and later secretary of a circus before forming his own theatrical company and producing and acting in his own plays. Fruhlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) was written in 1891 and like all his plays aroused great controversy for its sexual outspokenness.It is perhaps his best known work.
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire. He has written numerous collections of poems and books for adults and children. His adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus was performed at the Old Vic Theatre, London in 1968. In 1971/2 he worked with Peter Brook at his International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris. In 1984 he was appointed Poet Laureate. this version of Spring Awakening was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare company and first performed in The Pit at the Barbican, London, in August 1995.
