Saturday, February 18, 2017

Spring Awakening and Pandora's Box

I just uploaded to archive.org the complete English text, in PDF, of four plays by German playwright Frank Wedekind!
  • Spring Awakening
  • The Lulu Plays is comprised of:
    • Earth Spirit
    • Pandora's Box
    • Death and the Devil

Spring Awakening is known today as the basis of the musical Spring Awakening with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik. The musical opened on Broadway in 2006 and played for a little over two years. This original production won several Tony awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. It has been revived a number of times since then - most recently on Broadway in 2015.

Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, the first two in The Lulu Plays trilogy, are the basis of the 1929 silent film Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks and directed by G.W. Pabst.

Samuel A. Eliot, Jr. wrote the introduction to the collection in 1923, presumably the year it was published in the United Kingdom under the title Tragedies Of Sex. What a find!