We got away with it again

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We Got Away Again (original title The Skin of Our Teeth ) is a play in three acts written by Thornton Wilder , which is shaped by the Second World War as the Americans experienced it. Since it premiered on October 15, 1942 at the Shubert Theater in New Haven , Connecticut , the play has become world famous, even winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 and being performed in numerous theaters. The German-language premiere took place on March 16, 1944 in the Schauspielhaus Zurich. After 1945 it was taken over by numerous German theaters, so that Wilder became very popular here.

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We got away with it again is a drama that takes place in prehistory (ice age, deluge) and in the present (war). In the three acts, historical time and present modern time are constantly intertwined.

Throughout the whole piece you will find Cain, Moses, Homer, Muses, a fortune teller and many more next to each other. A theater director is also there, because the drama about apocalypses , war, literature, intergenerational differences and the philosophy of life is embedded in the framework of a theater rehearsal, in which the actors comment and interpret the story on the side, addressing self-knowledge, self-doubts and problems in front of and behind the stage Bring light.

Structure and plot

We got away with it again is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, their children Henry and Gladys and their maid Sabina. You play a typical American family in the 1930s / 1940s and are synonymous characters for Adam, Eve, Lilith and Cain. Representing all of humanity, the family goes through essential catastrophes in human history in three acts (ice age, flood, war). Together they build their lives again and again and move through Thornton Wilder's world, which is often interrupted by reality.

Act 1: The Antrobus family is preparing for the Ice Age. The boards in front of the heads are burned, the dinosaur sent outside. Sabina, the housemaid, no longer understands the world. Actually, she doesn't have to do much more than cook or inspire the multiplication tables that Mr. Antrobus expands every day in the office.

Act 2: President Antrobus and his wife open a congress that ends in the Flood. The kids grow up to be annoying teenagers. A fortune teller suggests the future.

3rd act: The war is over, life finds its way through diapers, evil returns to the family's lap, Father Antrobus wants to secure peace. Sabina ends up in the kitchen again. At the end of the third act, the Antrobus family's maid starts again with the entrance scene, waiting with dinosaurs and mammoths as pets for the head of the family, who fled into the house before the approaching Ice Age and with many asylum seekers.

interpretation

The piece uses many techniques from radio, film and musicals. It shows that evil and good are eternal components of life, and that its meaning lies in being alive itself. The fate of all humanity is shown using the example of a typical average family of our century. Modern allegory expresses that man's will to live outlasts all catastrophes. Whether ice age, flood or war, there is no end. The main characters are the members of the Antrobus family, who, according to Wilder , "reflect the fate of all mankind, seen through a telescope from a thousand miles away. " With the anachronisms the author wants to symbolize the "eternally same" fate of the human race that can be exchanged in individual phases. Existence appears meaningless and uniform, as a dance around catastrophes that everyone tries to avoid.

The piece is not one-strand and has absurd features. The theater illusion is repeatedly destroyed with the presence of the acting. Actors lose the thread, protest against their role, substitutes step in and still have to rehearse. Not only once or twice does it happen that the actors refuse to play scenes, that they yell at the audience or uncomfortably fall out of their roles. A direct connection to the audience is established, the piece is criticized and evaluated in itself.

Characters

Mr. Antrobus , a synonym for Adam , embodies the courage to start again as eternal Adam, takes advice from Homer , Plato or Aristotle , from Spinoza , from the Old and New Testaments and thus saves his virtuous wife, the rebellious son, the exemplary daughter including a seductive maid from the Ice Age, before the Flood and from the last great war.

Mrs. Antrobus , a synonym for Eva , is the typical housewife and mother and tries to keep the family together.

Henry Antrobus , a synonym for Cain , the son of the two, killed his brother with a stone and has had a scar on his forehead ever since. He embodies evil.

Gladys Antrobus , a synonym for Lilith , tries to please her father with make-up, red tights, etc., but repeatedly meets with appalled rejection.

House maid Sabina embodies the female type. In bad times she is the maid and in good times the beauty queen, with the aim of seducing Mr Antrobus.

Also playing: Announcer # 1, Announcer # 2, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Dragon, Dino, Polar Bear Baby, Fortune Teller, Telegraph Singer, Homer, Judge Mose , Miss E. Muse, Miss T. Muse, Broadcaster, Presidential Candidate, Mrs. Bailey, Hester, Ivy, Mrs. Tremayne

Quotes

“That's all we do - always start over! Why do we keep fooling ourselves? One day the earth will always cool down and until then all these things will happen again and again: Even more wars, and even more floods and earthquakes. " (Sabina, 3rd act)

A realization that some viewers may have taken to heart after watching Thornton Wilder's play in the early 1940s.

“You can go home, we will keep playing forever!” This is an optimistic message from the piece. The history of mankind begins over and over again, their will to live outlasts all catastrophes and the meaning of life lies in being alive and in humanity.

Radio plays

literature

  • Thornton Wilder: We got away with it again. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-27029-4 .