“The day” is now only one sleep away: 25th of March, . The show begins. With a history of 36 years, my major, German Language and Literature, has been performing a play once every two years. After I had received a phone call from my friend that there will be a play this year, at first, I got afraid that I would have to be on stage. However, realizing that there will be no more chances like this after my graduation, I applied for the audition; ending up with a role of a “rich count.”
The play, we are performing, is called “Der Reigen” from Arthur Schnitzler. Its literal meaning is “circle dance.” Now that I have a quite good understanding of the play, I can see why the author has named the play “circle dance.” This play is composed of 10 scenes; more like 10 dialogues. 10 main characters come out and each scene is actually just a dialogue between two people, always one man and one woman. One very interesting thing is that each character gets involved in two different relationships, and these distinctive relationships are, somehow, connected like a chain. For instance, A and B are on the first scene and on the second, B and C; on third, C and D, and so on. This sense of “connectedness” seems to create a circle among the characters.
I actually had neither the background knowledge of the play nor that of the author of the play. Before purchasing the script to practice for the audition, I thought that this play would also be similar to the plays I have seen up to now. Considering that it was an old German play, I thought it could be something philosophical or even political or hopefully a romance like “Romeo and Juliet.” As soon as I opened the first page of the play I really spoke out loud, “I think I’ve bought a wrong book!” It was totally different from the plays I have seen. Well, not different, but unexpected. The content and the words used in the dialogues were unbelievable. It was too obscene and straightforward. Each scene contained highly sexual contents. Thankfully, as everyone, even the professor who chose this play to be put on stage, agreed that it was unsuitable to perform everything as written on the script, we decided to dance as a substitute.
There were times when I regretted and even blamed myself for that I had applied for such time and energy consuming thing. Nevertheless, the memories I gained and also the people I got to know through this are so precious that I now tell myself “well done!”
Tomorrow is the day to show my three months of effort. Mijung! Break a leg!
Der Reigen? After reading your blog post I remembered having read this play in an undergraduate course I took many years ago. (We read the English translation, not the original.) As you wrote already, Break a leg!
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