“The Neuberin – The passion of a German theatre director“ was our first big theatrical book development which took up the years from 1997 to 1999.
Friederike Caroline Neuber, called the “Neuberin”, was an unusual woman. She attempted during her times to establish a sophisticated bourgeois state theater, a sort of theater in between the italian elite court opera of the times and the shack boulevard-theater of the marketplace. Despite the furor she managed to create in her younger years, as well as getting a few authors to write for her theater, she was pressed so hard by the male dominated competition, that she ended up losing her own theater, her troupe and lastly even her reputation.
This woman however set an example for the theater, and prepared through her efforts the path for a Lessing, who was then followed by a Goethe and a Schiller, and thereby assisted the nascency of a high level enlightened german theater. This woman affected theater history, though she has to this day -unjustifiably so- been given little recognition.
An impassioned woman in a time when actors were compared to vagrants and actresses passed as whores. Glory and downfall of a woman who was in the end put under by her male rivals, even her husband and her own actors. In the years 1997/98, the material was developed by authors Clemente Fernandez and J.U. Lensing into a stage play, a reflection on the life of the Neuberin from her 19th year to her death, in 24 scenes. The three and a half hour piece has been so far performed 14 times in Duesseldorf, Essen and Koeln and was in a shortened version be seen in the fall of 1999 in places where the Neuberin herself is known to have worked: Gotha, Weimar and Zwickau.
At present exists on CD a one hour condensed radio-play version of the play by J.U.Lensing, available since May 99.
The complete video-recording of 1999 from the premiere series in the Tanzhaus nrw is to be seen online from Thursday, 28th of May from 7pm on to Sunday, 31st of May, 2020 till 10pm.