Fairy tale drama

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A fairytale drama (also: fairy tale game ) is a stage play that has fairytale material or fairytale events as its content. A distinction can be made between fairy tale dramas for adults and those for children or for family entertainment (see also Christmas fairy tales ). The fairy tale drama experienced a climax in the romantic and neo-romantic epochs . A related genre is the French Feerie .

In the field of psychotherapy, the fairy tale game can also be found as an educational method in the form of role-playing games .

The German-language fairy tale drama in adult theater

While numerous plays with fairytale elements or allusions to well-known fairy tales can be found, the number of fairy tale dramas, the plot of which is primarily determined by one or more fairy tales, is manageable. Examples of dramas in which fairytale motifs are taken up without depicting the main plot can be found in Gerhart Hauptmann , Heinrich von Kleist or Hugo von Hofmannsthal . There are also some new fairy tale creations that are not based on existing fairy tales, such as B. Rebekka Kricheldorf's Princess Nicoletta (2003).

The following authors have used the fairy tale as the dominant plot. The fairy tale adaptations for adults are often characterized by a pronounced ironic gesture, a high level of self-referentiality and many references to earlier fairy tale dramas. In addition, in many of the pieces there is a critical and humorous examination of traditional role models, ideas of masculinity and femininity, as well as family and social structures.

The first German-language fairy tale drama in adult theater has Ludwig Tieck with his adaptation of Charles Perrault 's Le Maitre chat ou le chat botté (dt .: Puss in Boots created). With this and other fairy tale adaptations , Tieck stands in the tradition of the Italian author Carlo Gozzis , who already shaped important elements of fairy tale drama in his fiction. Subsequently, authors like August von Platen and Christian Dietrich Grabbe created fairy tale comedies. Around 1900 Eberhard König , Herbert Eulenberg and Hans Schönfeld wrote neo-romantic fairy tales. Furthermore, Robert Walser wrote three fairy tale reading dramas. In the German-speaking area, playwrights have been turning to fairytale drama again since the 1980s. Authors such as Tankred Dorst , Martin Mosebach , Elfriede Jelinek , Dea Loher , Reto Finger , Hannah Zufall and Rebekka Kricheldorf have adapted fairy tale materials for the stage. In addition to Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen , the main reference authors are the Brothers Grimm .


Foreign-language fairy tale dramas for adults have been written by Maurice Maeterlinck , Jean Giraudoux and Evgeni Schwarz .

Authors and works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. Franzke: Fairy tales and fairy tale games in psychotherapy , Bern 1991
  2. ↑ Hannah Fissenebert: Das Märchen im Drama: a study of German-language fairy tales from 1797 to 2017 . In: Christopher Balme (Ed.): Forum Neues Theater . 1st edition. tape 55 . Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, ISBN 978-3-8233-8314-7 .
  3. ↑ Hannah Fissenebert: Das Märchen im Drama: a study of German-language fairy tales from 1797 to 2017 . In: Christopher Balme (Ed.): Forum Neues Theater . 1st edition. tape 55 . Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8233-8314-7 .