- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Georg Büchner’s three surviving dramatic texts show the playwright wrestling with divergent styles in a struggle to convey his bleak worldview … Sean Graney reveal[s] much the same process. Both artists want to build on centuries-old theatrical traditions yet shred the niceties of conventional theater to expose life’s raw nerves … Graney exploits his trademark techniques — stark design, inflated acting, self-reflexive presentation — to create an explosive, richly unpleasant affair … Büchner poured every ounce of his cynicism into Prince Leonce, whose absurd battle with boredom fuels LEONCE UND LENA. Leonce can find nothing better to do with his days than spit on a rock 365 times in a row, convinced that human beings ‘fall in love, marry, and multiply out of boredom, and finally they die out of boredom.’ His childish father has betrothed him to the Princess Lena, a plan that will greatly interfere with Leonce’s commitment to idleness … Since Büchner is satirizing the theatrical conventions of his day, she’s earnestly trying to become a fairy-tale princess, spouting poetic rhapsodies about flowers and dragonflies — while wrestling with the realization that ‘there are people who are unhappy, incurably so, simply because they exist. For this play Büchner drew heavily on the conventions of commedia dell’arte, then a nearly 300-year-old tradition of stock rustic characters in cartoonish, often ribald situations. Graney transforms the genre into menacing farce, inflating the characters’ passions to such volatile extremes that they often quake as though ready to explode.” —Justin Hayford, The Chicago Reader
Author(s)
Georg BüchnerGeorg Büchner was born in Germany in 1813. He studied medicine, campaigned for social change, and wrote two plays, DANTON'S DEATH and LEONE AND LENA, before starting work on WOYZECK, which was based on a real criminal case. Büchner died of typhus at aged twenty-three.
Sean GraneySean Graney is the Artistic Director and Founder of The Hypocrites, a Chicago theater company. As a playwright, he has received productions of THE 4TH GRADERS PRESENT AN UNNAMED SUICIDE at 59E59 in New York, The Hypocrites and the side project in Chicago; AUTOPHAGY at the Drama League Director's Fest in 2007 in New York; PORNO at the side project in Chicago; as well as many adaptations and short plays. As a director, Mr. Graney directed over 30 productions since 1997. He was a participant in the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors from 2004/6. He has won two Joseph Jefferson Citations for Outstanding Direction.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
LEONCE UND LENA was adapted from a literal German translation by Evan Garfinkel
LEONCE UND LENA premiered in 2005 with the Hypocrites, Chicago, IL
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
A comical, anachronistic, and witty retelling of the Greek myth, composed “after Kleist by way of Molière with a little bit of Giraudoux.”
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00Play Description
In THE UNDERPANTS, she is waiting in the crowd — Berlin, circa 1910 — craning her neck forward to see the Kaiser pass by. Her panties fall down. It is possible that the Kaiser might see them at her feet. What crisis could be bigger than that? Carl Sternheim poses this question at the outset of THE STERNHEIM TRILOGY. By the end, the lady is pregnant, pregnant, one might say, with the future of the booboisie in the person of THE SNOB, Christian Maske, who rises, in the second part, from the lower booboisie to the higher. In the third part, 1913, Christian rises higher all the way to the top of bourgeois society in twentieth-century mode. The whole crisis of 1914–1918 looms. 1933–1945 is not far away.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A groundbreaking masterpiece of the modern theatre. The play tells the tale of a poor soldier, a barber in the army, who is overwhelmed by the military and forced to become a human guinea pig for quasi-medical research. Consumed by jealousy over his lover’s infidelity, Woyzeck is driven to despair, to madness, and to murder. Poignant and grotesque, insightful and all-too-human, the play broke every theatrical mold of its time, paving the way for theatre as we know it today.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, doubling, bit parts, children, extras)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
In THE UNDERPANTS, she is waiting in the crowd — Berlin, circa 1910 — craning her neck forward to see the Kaiser pass by. Her panties fall down. It is possible that the Kaiser might see them at her feet. What crisis could be bigger than that? Carl Sternheim poses this question at the outset of THE STERNHEIM TRILOGY. By the end, the lady is pregnant, pregnant, one might say, with the future of the booboisie in the person of THE SNOB, Christian Maske, who rises, in the second part, from the lower booboisie to the higher. In the third part, 1913, Christian rises higher all the way to the top of bourgeois society in twentieth-century mode. The whole crisis of 1914–1918 looms. 1933–1945 is not far away.
Production Info
Cast: 12 total (3 female, 9 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Ferdinand is an army major and son of President von Walter, a high-ranking noble in a German duke’s court, while Luise Miller is the daughter of a middle-class musician. The couple fall in love with each other, but both their fathers tell them to end their affair. The President instead wants to expand his own influence by marrying Ferdinand to Lady Milford, the duke’s mistress, but Ferdinand rebels against his father’s plan and tries to persuade Luise to elope with him.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (2 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Possibly the ultimate coming-of-age drama. The play follows a group of high-school friends in Victorian-age Germany who begin to experience their first sexual desires in a world where even talking about sex is taboo. Each struggles to travel the route from childhood to adulthood without a roadmap. Along the way they touch the heights of elation and the depths of despair while being forced to confront the problems of lust, sadism, masochism, rape, abortion, and homosexuality. Some survive the journey, others do not. Funny and horrifying by turns, the play explores the budding of those basic drives that make us who we are.
Production Info
Cast: 25 total (7 female, 18 male, some doubling)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Len Jenkin's surrealistic comedy uses Franz Kafka's story “Ein Landarzt” as a point of departure to explore his personal life and literary works.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Eric Overmyer’s sparkling adaptation and synthesis of Beaumarchais’s THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO and Ödön von Horváth’s FIGARO GETS A DIVORCE. FIGARO/FIGARO follows the iconic characters of Figaro, Susanna, the Count and Countess Almaviva, and other favorites through the ups and downs inherent in all relationships — husband and wife, master and servant, family ties and the like.
Production Info
Cast: 17 total (6 female, 11 male)Full Length Drama (about 160 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.00Play Description
In THE UNDERPANTS, she is waiting in the crowd — Berlin, circa 1910 — craning her neck forward to see the Kaiser pass by. Her panties fall down. It is possible that the Kaiser might see them at her feet. What crisis could be bigger than that? Carl Sternheim poses this question at the outset of THE STERNHEIM TRILOGY. By the end, the lady is pregnant, pregnant, one might say, with the future of the booboisie in the person of THE SNOB, Christian Maske, who rises, in the second part, from the lower booboisie to the higher. In the third part, 1913, Christian rises higher all the way to the top of bourgeois society in twentieth-century mode. The whole crisis of 1914–1918 looms. 1933–1945 is not far away.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
A fresh, performable version of Goethe's “unstageable” masterpiece. God and Mephistopheles vie for the mortal soul of Dr Faust. Signing a pact with the nihilistic spirit, Faust is privy to knowledge unbound and sensual delights of which most men can only dream. But before long, the Doctor comes to realise that you should always be very careful what you wish for.
Production Info
Cast: 12 total (5 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 240 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Eric Bentley’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s classic LA RONDE.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (5 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes