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David G. John, Bennewitz, Goethe, Faust: German and Intercultural Stagings. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.329 pp.
Goethe's Faust is not only Goethe's most performed work but arguably the closest Goethe came to his own ideal of Weltliteratur. Relatively little, however, has been written about the history of non-Westem Faust performances or, for that matter, about some of the directors who have made directing Faust on international stages their life's work. Considering the essential roles that performance studies, GDR history, and intercultural exchange currently play in German Studies, David G. John's monograph provides a timely introduction to an important figure in East German theater.
John not only suggests that Fritz Bennewitz (1926-95), previously overlooked in almost all histories of theater, in fact "towers above any other German director, including Peter Stein" (7), but also argues that Bennewitz deserves a place alongside the twentieth century's greatest intercultural innovators. Each of Bennewitz's Faust productions explicitly engages with the linguistic, cultural, economic, political, and even racial environment in which it was staged. Citing the connection that Carl Weber has drawn among twentieth-century theater practitioners who use foreign impulses as models, from Bertolt Brecht to Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowsky, Peter Brook, and Richard Schechner, John seeks to add Bennewitz to this legacy (10).
Beyond...