Pains
of Youth (Krankheit der Jugend) is a play about a hopeless generation of
young people whose sense of purpose and morals have been shaken. It depicts
a group of medical students in ‘Red Vienna’ coping with the ghosts
of the Great War. It voices the frustrations and disillusionment of youth in
a world that is hopelessly out of joint. Youth itself is a disease. In a society
saturated in Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist socialism, the only avenue
of escape for these twenty-somethings is sexual promiscuity, substance abuse,
manipulation or suicide.
Pains of Youth is a kind of bridge between expressionism and psychological
realism, with a tinge of Brecht’s epic thrown in. Written in 1926, the
same year Mein Kampf was`published, the playwright, Ferdinand Bruckner,
practically prophesizes the catastrophe ahead. All the characters are extreme
in their search for meaning. Only danger or death itself can bring them close
enough to their ideals.
Pains
of Youth was translated by Harmony Hall between March – July 2001.
Harmony, an American raised in Germany, works in natural resources and recently
completed two years in the Peace Corp. Between September 2001 and February 2002,
Doug Howe and Nikki Berger adapted the text from Harmony’s draft into
a working playscript. Readings were held in November 2001 at Galapagos in Williamsburg
and in January 2002 at Theatre for the New City. The full production was mounted
at the Access Theatre in lower Manhattan during May and June 2002.
Karl
Levett, critic for Backstage wrote, “The rescuing of this 1926 play,
Krankheit der Jugend, by the Austrian playwright Ferdinand Bruckner,
has been the mission of a new Brooklyn-based group, THALATTA!
The play has been given a direct translation by Harmony Hall, then further adapted
by two cast members Nikki Berger and Doug Howe, and it’s well worth the
rescuing…. The play is a find and THALATTA!
deserves credit for the welcome rediscovery.”
