Spring Awakening.

HUGHES, Ted.

Publication Date: 1995

About this Item

London: Faber and Faber. 1995. 8vo. White card paper wrappers with illustration of a nude female portrait to the front wrapper with black title lettering to spine; very minimal staining to wrappers otherwise fine. First edition of a scarce translation, with an inscription to Hughes' friend Nick Grant; "A play about the famous court-case; wicked versus wicked/ Love Ted/1st October 1995".The German playwright Frank Wedekind completed Spring Awakening in 1897 when he was merely 27 years old and it provoked controversy for its sexual frankness. The play revovles around a collective of teenagers struggling to understand and assert their sexuality in an opressive late 19th century landscape. After the success of his revision of Seneca's Oedipus at The Old Vic Theatre in 1968, Hughes would go onto work with theatre director Peter Brook at his International Centre of Theatre Research in Paris. Hughes revision of this shocking production, more than 100 years after it was first performed was comissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. For Spring Awakening, Hughes was praised for his ability to conjure up the often pretencious vocabulary of the young adult and to seamlesly encapsulate everyday life. Just as Hughes wrote in his essay,"Myth and Education", "Every new child is nature's chance to correct culture's error"; the poetic translation of Frank Wedekind's best work, is a literal example of the misfortune and dislocation borne by societies repression- a timeless and dangeorus fault contemporary to this day.This version of Spring Awakening was first performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Pit in The Barbican, London, on 2nd August 1995.

Seller Inventory # 2121078

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Spring Awakening.
• Publication Date: 1995
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition