Tuesday, April 16, 2013

News at Eleven: Seeking to make the experience of the play

more resonant for modern ears, he's tinkered in minor keys--the five-syllable Italian family name "Piccolomini," for instance, he has reduced to the four-syllable "Palladini"--and in major ones. As it is believed that Bertolt Brecht used "Wallenstein" as a model for his own war play, "Mother Courage and her Children," [Robert] Pinsky turned to a classic Brechtian technique, an alienation device, to create an alter ego for the play's hero that in the script he denotes as "Dead Wallenstein."

Dead Wallenstein speaks directly to us, in brief remarks at the start of each scene, in a voice steeped in both Bohemia and, well, New Jersey, maybe.

from The Washington Post: A Poet Laureate Tackles a German Classic in Shakespeare Theatre's 'Wallenstein'
then The Washington Post: Q&A with poet Robert Pinsky

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