Felix Mitterer's reputation as a European dramatist of the first
rank is by now firmly established. With his gift for sketching
social milieu in a few salient strokes and creating almost
unbearably intense moments of dramatic suspense, he has for over
thirty years been riveting the attention of viewers on the
suffering of such oppressed groups as the aged (Siberia), the
mentally challenged (No Room for Idiots) and the workingmen and
women in thrall to corrupt corporations (One Everyman). The two
plays offered here, In the Lions' Den and The Panther, fall well
within the purview of Mitterer's social concerns, portraying as
they do, respectively, the plight of the Jews in the Third Reich
and, once again, the aged in contemporary society. Yet they also
reveal a deeper and more personal thematic vein having to do with
the intimate symbiosis of language and individual identity. In
Lions' Den the Jewish protagonist Kirsch affects Tyrolean dialect
to create an Aryan persona for survival purposes, in effect
corroborating the idealist doctrine, esse est percipi (to be is to
be perceived, as this or that). You are what you can persuade
others you are, and God help you if your powers of persuasion fail
you! In The Panther the old man's self-image, his very sense of
himself, erodes with the chipping-away of age at his memory of the
lines that make up Rilke's immortal Dinggedicht. In both plays the
bedrock ordering of experience imposed by language is strained to
the breaking point, leaving the protagonists teetering on the brink
of the abyss that looms just beyond personal identity. Of his own
life the self-effacing Felix Mitterer has said: "Its only unusual
aspect is that I became a writer, that I was saved and others
weren't". His words allude obliquely to the grinding poverty and
backbreaking work he had to endure labouring on the farms of the
Tyrol as he grew up. They also convey his solidarity with those
"others" who could not make it out of the Alpine ghetto and suggest
his deep commitment to make their plight, and that of other
oppressed groups, the driving force of his dramatic art. Felix
Mitterer has done what all true artists do, transformed his
personal demons into angels of art. And in tracing, through that
art, the correspondence between his own demons and those of
society, he masters them, not only in himself but in the receptive
viewer (or reader) as well.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
