The zoo story

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Data
Title: The zoo story
Original title: The Zoo Story
Original language: English
Author: Edward Albee
Publishing year: 1958
Premiere: September 28, 1959
Place of premiere: Schiller Theater Workshop in Berlin
Place and time of the action: New York's Central Park in the 20th century
people
  • Jerry
  • Peter

The Zoo Story (in the English original: The Zoo Story ) is a one-act play by Edward Albee , his first work, which he did in 1958 in just three weeks on paper. The first performance of the piece, which was translated into German by Pinkas Braun, took place - together with the German premiere of Beckett's The Last Band - on September 28, 1959 in the workshop of the Berlin Schiller Theater, which opened with this performance. Kurt Buecheler (Peter) and Thomas Holtzmann (Jerry) played under the direction of Walter Henn . The performance was recorded by the broadcaster Free Berlin for television and u. a. broadcast nationwide on January 2, 1963 in the second program of ARD . The US premiere took place on January 14, 1960 - also together with The Last Tape - at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village (New York) with William Daniels as Peter and George Maharis as Jerry. This production was also a great success and saw more than 500 performances.

action

The one-act play is about Peter, a family man living in a middle-class family, and the single Jerry. They meet on a park bench in New York's Central Park. Jerry manages to gradually involve Peter in a conversation against his will. He tells that he has just come from the zoo and urges Peter and the rest to do so. a. the pathetic, sometimes disgusting "story of Jerry and the dog", which describes his dreary life situation.

When Peter - disgusted and overwhelmed by Jerry's relentless portrayal of his misery - finally says that he really needs to go home, Jerry doesn't accept it. He tickles Peter, whose giggles grow to roaring laughter until he agrees to listen to what really happened in the zoo today. Jerry now begins to push Peter off "his" bench, which he does not want to put up with. Jerry suddenly pulls out a knife and threatens Peter with it, but then drops it. At the same time he continues to provoke Peter until he finally grabs the knife and holds it in front of him defensively. Jerry lunges at him and into the knife, then sinks back onto the park bench. While he's bleeding to death, he brings his zoo story to a close. Jerry wonders if he planned it all that way, which is actually not possible, but is still the case. With a certain satisfaction he finally states that he had driven Peter off his park bench in the end and that Peter will never find his usual peace again.

Additional act

Almost 50 years after the original version of "Zoogeschichte" was published, Albee added a first act Homelife to his play , in which instead of Jerry, Peter's wife appears. Both parts together result in a new drama called At Home at the Zoo . Albee justified this with the preponderance of the role of Jerry, which makes the "zoo story" a one and a half person piece. The additional first act should give the piece more balance. He would only allow professional theaters to perform the “Zoo Story” in connection with the first act. Only school and amateur theaters are likely to continue to bring the one-act original version onto the stage.

Interpretative approach

The zoo story was described by Albee himself as a piece in a scene . The initially contemplative and peaceful atmosphere in Central Park is accentuated by Peter's appearance. Its shape and appearance are inconspicuous; his tweed suit, horn-rimmed glasses and his pipe, as well as his book reading, suggest an intellectual activity; later Peter reveals his job as a publishing editor . The author characterizes Peter in the scene instructions as someone who "lives in harmony with himself and the world".

The idyllic atmosphere at the beginning is suddenly disturbed by Jerry's appearance, who is described as "tired of life" in the stage instructions. From Jerry’s rhetorical attack, a dialogue develops that quickly becomes more dramatic. Jerry, who seeks contact, tries to provoke his counterpart with aggression; Peter, on the other hand, tries to maintain the appearance of politeness, which leads him to small lies in the feeling of growing irritation.

For his part, Jerry not only forces the conversation partner to talk to him, but also resembles a chess player in his rebellious endeavor to obtain topographical information, causing his opponent to make moves that he actually doesn't want. For example, Peter, who has two daughters, has to admit that he doesn't want any more children.

In this one-act play, clearly structured in a classic form, the exposition provides not only the location and time of the action but also the essential background information about the identity of the two protagonists ; with Jerry's performance of his story of "Jerry and the Dog" as a parable , the meaning of which Peter does not understand at first, the further dramatic development follows. Jerry's attempt to clarify the meaning of the parable to Peter through non-verbal actions and finally physical use of force, such as tickling and violent pushing, leads to crisis and peripetia , which prompts Peter to strike back.

The title term of the zoo story refers to the experience Jerry had previously in the zoo, when he observed the loneliness of the people in front of the cages, who, like the animals in the cages, were afraid of each other and watched each other with fear. Now even Peter can no longer hide this certain expression on his face and Jerry begins, as Albee's scene instructions say, "to move on stage with increasing determination and deliberation". From now on he has Peter in his hand and knows that his plan will succeed, with Peter's help, to find the self-chosen death.

Peter fails to classify Jerry, who disturbs his peace and idyll, and to determine his social status or to assign him to a specific social group. Regardless, such a social classification would only widen the gap between them, since social norms wouldn't say anything definite about Jerry. Jerry is aware of this; as a bohemian American “hipster” he possesses an instinctive knowledge in contrast to Peter, who is restricted in a decent, conventional life as a typical image of the “American square”. Jerry's telling of the simile story of himself and the dog serves to break the complacency of Peter and to illustrate to him what Jerry expects from people and his "neighbor". With the story of the zoo, Jerry gives Peter a key to a life full of self-confidence that he does not or no longer knows.

After Jerry's monologue-like report, the hourglass of calamity is reversed: the previous story is repeated in a greatly reduced form: Now Peter has to fight Jerry like before; In the following argument between the two, he takes on the role of the aggressive dog from the story and tries to drive Peter from his traditional place, the bank.

This apparently pointless action is part of Jerry's plan: Peter, irritated by Jerry's provocations, is forced to assert himself in this unusual situation for him. The dispute continues to escalate; Jerry pulls a knife out of his pocket, snaps it open and passes it to Peter. Then he mocks Peter's essential life content in the form of an intensification, i.e. H. first his cats and budgies, then his daughters and his wife.

After another brief exchange of words, Jerry then implements the decision he had already made at the beginning to let Peter kill him and throws himself at the knife that Peter is holding in his hand. He then thanks Peter and confesses to him that he was afraid that Peter would be pushed out of the bank and thereby leave him alone. As he dies, he advises Peter to “quickly” disappear. The last words at the end of the one-act play are Jerry's repetition or echo of Peter's miserable cry: "O my God". The final sequence of the Zoo Story at the latest shows Albee's unmistakable parody of love and death.

A pattern becomes visible in the history of the zoo, which is also characteristic of Albee's later works: only an act of violence can upset the self-satisfied and break the shell of their indifference or indolence . Albee uses the formal language of satire to emphasize the desperation over (inter) human isolation and the difficulties of overcoming it; For him, violence itself is the compelling form of expression for satire.

Jerry dies at the end of the one-act play, but he still has a victory: it becomes clear to the audience that Peter is no longer the same person he appeared on stage at the beginning. In this form, Albee's intention is to change the attitude of the audience with Peter's change.

Jerry, for his part, is one of Albee's dramatic characters , who instinctively rather than intellectually distinguish the world of appearances from that of being and who “reduce meaningless conventions to absurdity ”. In this way he exposes the self-lies of the conformist Peter and tries to uncover the false, prefabricated models in his rebellion against social norms, but ultimately has neither the strength nor the power to effectively rebel against the status quo . Therefore the only option left for him to escape from this state is by choosing death himself.

Albee's dramaturgy in the history of the zoo is shaped at the same time by the constant reversal of sensations; Dislike and affection alternate continuously in the dialogue between the two protagonists; Hate and love are inextricably interwoven as opposing passions. In addition, Albee used the means of melodrama in zoo history , such as B. exaggeration and sentimentality , as well as the means of farce in the representation of aggression to achieve such an almost tragicomic effect.

Reception history

Albees The History of the Zoo has been part of the standard repertoire of the world stage since its first performance in 1959 and has attracted the attention of literary criticism and literary scholars alike .

Despite the generally positive reception , Albee's work with its ambiguities has at the same time aroused confusion, confusion and extremely controversial interpretations.

The interpretations of the piece range from biographical approaches (“psychological need for homosexual contacts”) to Christian - allegorical attempts at interpretation, in which Jerry is seen as the figure of Jesus and Peter as the embodiment of Saint Peter in a modern form of traditional medieval morality . In this way, Jerry's death is understood allegorically as a sacrificial or expiatory death, but also as an erotically motivated death.

The animal metaphors in Albee's one-act play are also interpreted differently. For example , the zoo is symbolically related to Central Park, but also to New York City as a whole or even to all of humanity; the dog story is again partly interpreted as a hidden analogy for the zoo story.

For Albee, the zoo itself as an image of a collection of caged animals is, similar to Randall Jarrell or Allen Ginsberg's, the terrible symbol for contemporary American society. For example, Jerry says in the history of the zoo : “I went to the zoo to find out more about the way animals exist with each other, and with people too. It wasn't a fair test, what with everyone separated by bars from everyone else ...? "

The Zoo Story is unanimously seen in literary studies and criticism as an almost fully developed prototype of Albee's later works.

Secondary literature

  • Helmut M. Braem: The zoo story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, pp. 47–54.
  • John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , pp. 188-192.
  • Ronald Hayman: The Zoo Story . In: Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . Heinemann Verlag, London 1971, ISBN 0-435-18409-1 , pp. 1-12.
  • Leonard G. Heldreth: From Reality to Fantasy: Displacement and Death in Albee's Zoo Story . In: Michele K. Langford (Ed.): Contours of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Eighth International Conference in the Fantastic of the Arts . Greenwood Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-313-26647-6 , pp. 19-28.
  • Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Edward Albee: The Zoo Story . In: Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Great American One-act Plays - Model Interpretations . Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-12-578220-1 , pp. 119-131.
  • Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in single representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 412). Kröner, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 8: Edward Albee." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on April 21, 2009)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.csustan.edu
  2. ↑ No Author Better Served - The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider, p. 58 fn. 2 in the Google book search
  3. ↑ http://www.tvprogramme.net/60/1963/19630102.htm
  4. ↑ Barbara Lee Horn: Edward Albee - A Research and Production Sourcebook. P. 2 in the Google book search
  5. ↑ Philip C. Kolin (Ed.): Conversations with Edward Albee. S. xxiiii
  6. ↑ Stephen James Bottoms: The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee. P. 17 ff. In the Google book search
  7. ↑ CurtainUp - Review of "Peter and Jerry" (English .; called on April 21, 2009)
  8. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 48.
  9. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 48.
  10. ↑ Cf. on the meaning of this parable Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Edward Albee: The Zoo Story . In: Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Great American One-act Plays - Model Interpretations . Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-12-578220-1 , p. 127f.
  11. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 188.
  12. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 49.
  13. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 50. For the characterization of Peter and Jerry, see also Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Edward Albee : The Zoo Story . In: Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Great American One-act Plays - Model Interpretations . Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-12-578220-1 , p. 126 f.
  14. ↑ See also John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 189.
  15. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 52.
  16. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 52 f. See also Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Edward Albee: The Zoo Story . In: Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Great American One-act Plays - Model Interpretations . Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-12-578220-1 , p. 128 f.
  17. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 53. See also Ronald Hayman: The Zoo Story . In: Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . Heinemann Verlag, London 1971, ISBN 0-435-18409-1 , p. 11.
  18. ↑ See Helmut M. Braem: The Zoo Story . In: Helmut M. Braem: Edward Albee , Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater, Volume 63, Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1968, without ISBN, p. 54.
  19. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 188.
  20. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 188.
  21. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 189. See also Ronald Hayman: The Zoo Story on the different interpretive approaches . In: Ronald Hayman: Contemporary Playwrights - Edward Albee . Heinemann Verlag, London 1971, ISBN 0-435-18409-1 , pp. 9-12, and Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Edward Albee: The Zoo Story . In: Irene Jansen and Stephen W. Souris: Great American One-act Plays - Model Interpretations . Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-12-578220-1 , pp. 122-124.
  22. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , pp. 189 and 191.
  23. ↑ See p. 39 f. in: Edward Albee: The American Dream and The Zoo Story . Signet Books, New York 1991. See also Herbert Rauter: Edward Albee . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 488-505, here p. 500.
  24. ↑ See John V. Hagopian: The Zoo Story . In: Hermann J. Weiand (Ed.): Insight IV - Analyzes of Modern British and American Drama . Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1975, ISBN 3-454-12740-8 , p. 188. See also Herbert Rauter: Edward Albee . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 488-505, here p. 490.