Kay from the NT tells us that Philip Pullman will now be at the platform tonight at 6pm, introducing the staged version of Heinrich von Kleist's renowned essay, performed by Iain Mitchell, Matt Wilde and Ben Wright, directed by Matt Wilde, movement by Ben Wright and Dominic Leclerc. (Read More about the platform) After the presentation, Philip Pullman will answer questions. Purchase Tickets.
On the Marionette Theatre Platform
Platform: On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist
5 March 2004 6pm
Olivier Theatre
Philip Pullman introduces a staged version of Heinrich von Kleist's renowned essay. Performed by Iain Mitchell, Matt Wilde and Ben Wright Directed by Matt Wilde Movement by Ben Wright and Dominic Leclerc After the presentation, Philip Pullman will answer questions. Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) served seven years in the Prussian army, and his work first attracted attention when he was in prison accused as a spy. The grim and intense drama Penthesilea (1808) contains some of his most powerful poetry and The Broken Pitcher (1808) is a masterpiece of dramatic comedy; they were followed by Katherine of Heilbronn (1810) and Die Hermannsschlacht (1821). His 1821 play, The Prince of Homburg, was performed at the National in 1982 with Patrick Drury, Lindsay Duncan and Anthony Head. His collection of eight masterly novellas, including Michael Kohlhaas, The Earthquake in Chile, and The Marquise of O was published in 1811. During his lifetime, Goethe, sensing in the younger man his greatest rival, carefully withheld from him the endorsement that would have established his reputation. At the age of thirty-four, impoverished and in debt, despairing of the literary honour he had hoped to gain for his family, Kleist consummated a suicide pact with an incurably ill married woman. He was virtually forgotten until the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rilke, Kafka and Thomas Mann hailed him as a master of German prose and European dramatic literature and is now considered the first of the great 19th-century German dramatists.
