The Works of August Strindberg (A Collection)

[Riklaa]

August Strindberg Swedish writer Born Johan August Strindberg 21 January 1849(1849-01-21) Stockholm, Sweden Died 14 May 1912 (aged 63) Stockholm, Sweden Resting place Norra begravningsplatsen Occupation Playwright • Novelist • Essayist Nationality Swedish Period Modernism Literary movement Naturalism Expressionism Notable work(s) The Red Room (1879) The Father (1887) Miss Julie (1888) Inferno (1897) To Damascus (1898) A Dream Play (1902) The Ghost Sonata (1908) Influences[show]André Antoine • Georg Brandes • Henrik Ibsen • Søren Kierkegaard • Friedrich Nietzsche • Max Reinhardt • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Emanuel Swedenborg • Émile Zola Signature Johan August Strindberg ( pronounced (help·info); 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition so innovative that many were to become technically possible to stage only with the advent of film. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. Strindberg died shortly after the first of his plays was staged in the United States—The Father opened on 9 April 1912 at the Berkeley Theatre in New York, in a translation by Edith and Wärner Oland. During Christmas 1911, Strindberg became sick with pneumonia and he never recovered completely. He also started to suffer from a stomach disease, presumably cancer. He died on 14 May 1912 at the age of 63. Strindberg was interred in the Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm, and thousands of people followed his corpse during the funeral proceedings. Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Maxim Gorky, John Osborne, and Ingmar Bergman are a few of the many people who have cited him as an influence. A multi-faceted author, Strindberg was often extreme. Strindberg wanted to attain what he called "greater Naturalism." He disliked the expository character backgrounds that characterise the work of Henrik Ibsen and rejected the convention of a dramatic "slice of life" because he felt that the resulting plays were mundane and uninteresting. Strindberg felt that true naturalism was a psychological "battle of brains": two people who hate each other in the immediate moment and strive to drive the other to doom is the type of mental hostility that Strindberg strove to describe. He intended his plays to be impartial and objective, citing a desire to make literature akin to a science. The changing nature of his political positions is perhaps illustrable by the women's rights issue. Early on, Strindberg was sympathetic to women of 19th-century Sweden, calling for women's suffrage as early as 1884. However, during other periods he had wildly misogynistic opinions, calling for lawmakers to reconsider the emancipation of these "half-apes ... mad ... criminal, instinctively evil animals". This has become controversial in contemporary assessments of Strindberg, as have his antisemitic descriptions of Jews (and, in particular, Jewish enemies of his in Swedish cultural life) in some works (e.g. Det nya riket), particularly during the early 1880s. Strindberg's antisemitic pronouncements, just like his opinions of women, have been debated, and also seem to have varied considerably. Many of these attitudes, passions and behaviours may have been developed for literary reasons and ended as soon as he had exploited them in books.[88] In satirizing Swedish society—in particular the upper classes, the cultural and political establishment, and his many personal and professional foes—he could be very confrontational, with scarcely-concealed caricatures of political opponents. This could take the form of brutal character disparagement or mockery, and while the presentation was generally skilful, it was not necessarily subtle.

[Riklaa]

There are Crimes and Crimes: A Comedy
by August Strindberg [1899]
Translated and adapted by Max Faber
Produced by H. B. Fortuin

Broadcast Monday 8th February 1962 @ 8:30 p.m., BBC World Theatre
Time: 1 hr. 35 min.

80/44/mono; 54.4 MB; sound quality poor
this copy has been filtered to reduce aural muddiness

It's Paris in 1899. Maurice Gerard, a young author, is full of hope for the opening night of his first play. While his five-year-old daughter and her mother are waiting for him, a new woman, Henriette Mauclere, the mistress of his artist friend Adolphe, blows into his life.

Life becomes a dream that veers into nightmare.

"There are crimes which are not in the criminal code - and they are the worst, because we must unish them ourselves. And no judge could exercise the pitless severity with which we condemn ourselves."

With Kenneth Griffith [Maurice Gerard, a Playwright], Joan Greenwood [Henriette Mauclere, His Mistress], Nigel Stock [Adolphe, a Painter], Barbara Mitchell [Jeanne], Sheila Grant [Marion, Jeanne's Little Daughter], Earle Grey [Abbe], Anthony Viccars [Emile, Jeanne's Brother], Vivienne Chatterton [Madame Catherine], Haydn Jones [Police Commissaire], and Michael Spice [The Detective].

Strindberg 620208 There are crimes and crimes_filtered.mp3

[Riklaa]

The Dance Of Death
by August Strindberg (1849-1912)
adapted by Max Faber from his English translation.
With Margaret Leighton and Donald Wolfit.
Producer: H.B. Fortuin.
A programme in the World Theatre series.

This play, written in 1901, "is Strindberg's exposition of the 'love-hate' relationship which he himself found in marriage. (He embarked on his third unsuccessful marriage the year the play appeared). Edgar, Captain of the Garrison Artillery, and his wife, a former actress, have lived for twenty-five years in a tower - the granite tower of an island fort off the coast of Sweden. The arrival of Alice's cousin, Kurt, to take up his post as Quarantine Officer to the garrison, sets the Captain's cruelty and jealousy and his wife's hatred flaring up. Late in the play their beloved daughter Judith arrives, to become a further cause of jealousy between them. Edgar perhaps reveals the secret of his bitterness and sadism when he says, 'I could never bring myself to believe that this was the real life. It's death - or something worse. We're probably put here to torment each other ..." (T.S. notes).

Home Service 30 Jan 1961

Captain....................................Donald Wolfit
Alice, his wife...................................Margaret Leighton
Jenny, the maid......................................Mairhi Russell
Kurt......................................Sebastian Shaw
Judith..............................................Catherina Dolan
Allan...............................................Nicholas Edmett
Lieutenant... .........................................John Bryning.

Strindberg 610130 Dance of Death.mp3

[Riklaa]

The Father: a Tragedy in Three Acts
by August Strindberg [1887]
translated by Max Faber
produced by John Tydeman
90 mins
original broadcast R3 25 April 1971
repeat broadcast R4, 2 January 1988

Captain.....................................Trevor Howard
Laura......................................Peggy Ashcroft
Bertha....................................Elizabeth Proud
Nurse.....................................Grizelda Hervey
Pastor......................................Rolf Lefebvre
Doctor....................................Denys Hawthorne
Njod........................................Kerry Francis
Sward.....................................Leslie Heritage

160/44; 100.5 MB; sound quality good

The Captain is an ex-military hero and a well respected scientist who fights with his wife about how to raise their daughter, Bertha. Both know Bertha cannot be raised in the Captain's household; however, the Captain wants her to be raised as an atheist in the city, whereas Laura wants her daughter to have a different destiny, perhaps as an artist. Swedish law of the time undermines Laura's position. Can she use the tools at hand to win control over her daughter's future?

Strindberg 710425 - The Father.mp3