Scandal on Stage
European Theater as Moral Trial

This book analyses how the outrage caused by controversial plays or productions reflects the moral standards of the time.

Theodore Ziolkowski (Author)

9781107412637, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 January 2013

204 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.28 kg

'When we speak of a scandal as 'created', this is often what we mean: something exceptional that takes place outside the text … it's this feeling of manipulation that encourages Ziolkowski to go on to argue that today the directors are increasingly part of the process, sometimes with the excuse that they are keeping texts alive, but in actuality always submitting them to some external imperative.' The Times Literary Supplement

New plays and operas have often tried to upset the status quo or disturb the assumptions of theatre audiences. Yet, as this study explores, the reactions of the audience or of the authorities are often more extreme than the creators had envisaged, to include outrage, riots, protests or censorship. Scandal on Stage looks at ten famous theater scandals of the past two centuries in Germany and France as symptoms of contemporary social, political, ethical, and aesthetic upheavals. The writers and composers concerned, including Schiller, Stravinsky, Strauss, Brecht and Weil, portrayed new artistic and ideological ideas that came into conflict with the expectations of their audiences. In a comparative perspective, Theodore Ziolkowski shows how theatrical scandals reflect or challenge cultural and ethical assumptions and asks whether theatre can still be, as Schiller wrote, a moral institution: one that successfully makes its audience think differently about social, political and ethical questions.

Preface
1. Introduction
2. Overtures
3. Scanning the surface
4. Sounding the depths
5. Diagnosing the present
6. Overcoming the past
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB], Theatre studies [AN]