The king in the box

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The King in the Box is a play for children by Paul Maar from 1970, which was also published as a children's book in 1971.

Emergence

The King in the Box was Maar's first play that he wrote because the director of a children's theater finally wanted to put on new plays for children. Maar himself said in an interview about the creation of the piece:

“The director then said at the time that they had played Sleeping Beauty for the third time, the Seven Little Goats twice, they had“ noodled ”all of Grimm's fairy tales in the last ten years: I wonder if I would even try a new one Could write fairy tales? "

- Children's literature in conversation: Guest: Paul Maar (January 28, 1997) . In: Bookmarks. Messages from the reading center of the Heidelberg University of Education. Issue 2/1997, pp. 11–26 ( Memento from February 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

It was staged twenty times in the first year, then played abroad and made Paul Maar known as an author. u. a. Max Märkl also produced a children's opera for the play (premiered in 1997 at the Stadttheater Görlitz).

content

The play is about the two kings Hyacinth and Alabaster in the small land of Hyabasterland. The people are very fond of kings and everyone is happy and content. Only one person in the country is always angry and grumpy and imagines he is smarter than the two kings: Oberhofminister Krätzeklein. In order to bring discipline and order into the country, he seeks help from an evil witch. When King Hyacinth goes on a journey in search of a princess, the witch takes the form of Hyacinth, puts King Alabaster into a deep sleep and from then on rules the kingdom. People are unhappy because they are no longer allowed to make music, taxes are way too high and anyone who violates the laws created by the witch is thrown into jail. When King Hyacinth returns, he barely escapes the wicked witch. At first it seems hopeless to bring peace and happiness back to the small country - until the king discovers a box: This box belongs to a puppeteer ensemble and is very special: it can only be opened from the inside and everyone who gets into the box becomes small. The king is welcomed by the puppeteers and together they manage to smuggle the king in the box into the small country in order to overthrow the wicked witch.

Literature of the same name

There is a book of the same name by Norbert Landa and Sophie Schmid, which is about a king who is always dissatisfied. The coffee wasn't hot enough for him, the rooster crowed "kikeri" instead of "kikeriki" and the rain fell whenever it wanted. Then the king decided to have a large box made into which everything that bothered him could be put in.

literature

Web links

Individual proof

  1. ↑ Norbert Landa, Sophie Schmid (Illustr.): The king in the box . Winterthur 2005. ISBN 3-7941-5068-6 .