Erwin Piscator
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Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator, (December 17, 1893 – March 30, 1966) was a German theatrical director and producer who, with Bertolt Brecht, was the foremost exponent of epic theater, a genre that emphasizes the sociopolitical context rather than the emotional content or aesthetics of the play.[1]
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[edit] Biography
Piscator was born in Greifenstein.
He worked experimentally in Berlin after 1919. As stage director at the Volksbühne (1924–1927), and later as managing director at his own theater (on Nollendorfplatz), he produced social and political plays especially suited to his theories. His dramatic aims were utilitarian—to influence voters or clarify left-wing policies. He used mechanized sets, lectures, movies, and mechanical devices that appealed to his audiences. In 1926, his production of Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers (Die Räuber) appeared at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Piscator cut the text heavily and reinterpreted it as a vehicle for his political beliefs. He presented the protagonist Karl Moor as a Trotskyist intellectual, slightly reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin in his cane and bowler hat. As Karl's foil, Piscator made the figure of Spiegelberg, often presented as a sinister figure, the voice of the working-class revolution. As he died, the audience heard The Internationale sung.
In 1928 he produced a notable adaptation of the Czech novel The Good Soldier Schweik. He was described by former Romanian Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa as being, "a devoted Communist who had a longstanding relationship with Moscow."[2] He had founded the Proletarian Theater in Berlin in 1929.[3]
According to Pacepa when Hitler came to power he sought political asylum in the Soviet Union.[4] In 1937, he married dancer Maria Ley in Paris. Bertolt Brecht attended their wedding.
[edit] The New School's Dramatic Workshop and Piscator's return
Piscator and Ley went to the United States in 1939. He became director of the Dramatic Workshop, which he founded at the New School for Social Research in New York City (1940). In 1936, Piscator collaborated with Lena Goldschmidt on a stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which was directed by Lee Strasberg. Under the title, The Case of Clyde Griffiths, it ran for 19 performances on Broadway. Among Piscator's students at the Dramatic Workshop were Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Judith Malina, Walter Matthau, Harry Belafonte and Tennessee Williams.
Until her death in 1999, Ley lived in New York while Piscator had to return to West Germany in 1951. Piscator was appointed manager and director of the Freie Volksbühne in West-Berlin in 1962. He produced the K.G.B. backed play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth which was part of the Soviet plan to defame and smear Pope Pius XII as a Nazi collaborator[5] , as well as a noted production of Gerhart Hauptmann's verse tetralogy of the myth of the House of Atreus. Piscator's stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace has been played in some 16 countries since 1955, including three productions in New York City.
[edit] Impact on theater
Piscator's theater techniques of the 1920s such as the extensive use of picture and film projections from 1925 on as well as complex scaffold stages had an extensive influence on European and American production methods. His dramaturgy of contrasts led to sharp political satirical effects and anticipated the commentary techniques of epic theater. In the Federal Republic of Germany Piscator's interventionist theater model experienced a late second zenith. Several productions trying to come to terms with the German's Nazi past and on other timely issues made Piscator the inspirer of a mnemonic and documentary theater from 1963 on. Piscator's stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace has been played in some 16 countries since 1955, including three productions in New York.
[edit] References
- ^ "Piscator, Erwin." Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, volume 15, copyright 1991. Grolier Inc., ISBN 0-7172-5300-7
- ^ National Review Online, "Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican:The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority," Ion Mihai Pacepa, January 25, 2007
- ^ National Review Online, "Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican:The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority," Ion Mihai Pacepa, January 25, 2007
- ^ National Review Online, "Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican:The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority," Ion Mihai Pacepa, January 25, 2007
- ^ National Review Online, "Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican:The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority," Ion Mihai Pacepa, January 25, 2007
[edit] Work on Broadway
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (Belasco Theatre, 1942)
[edit] Films
- Revolt of the Fishermen (Vosstaniye rybakov). Director: Erwin Piscator, Book: Georgi Grebner, Willy Döll, Producer: Michail Doller, USSR 1932-1934.
