Von Morgens bis Mitternachts
Von Morgens bis Mitternachts I"From morning to midnight") is a German play by Georg Kaiser ()[].
Contents
The original text
An satirical expressionist play written in 1912 that charts the life of a cashier who steals money from the bank and flees to Berlin. The un-named protagonist's bid to escape his middle-class daily life is ultimately frustrated. In the end, disillusioned and pursued by the police, he takes his own life. It is a popular piece in which Kaiser satirized the cheapness and futility of modern society. His hero, a kind of machine-age Everyman, searches everywhere for some kind of fulfilment - in commercial sex, in salvationist religion - but discovers through a series of nightmarish episodes that the world is deceitful and illusory.
The but was banned for reasons which were not entirely clear, being neither immoral nor anarchistic, Produced by the Austrian Max Reinhardt in 1917.
Translations and adaptations
Translated into Afrikaans as Van Dagbreek tot Middernag and adapted for radio by Lourens Fourie.
Performance history in South Africa
1962: Van Dagbreek tot Middernag broadcast in the programme Meesterdrama on the SABC's Afrikaans Service on 1 May, directed by Lourens Fourie.
Sources
https://www.amazon.com/Morning-Midnight-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1783190132
The text of the typed text of Van Dagbreek tot Middernag, found in the Stellenbosch Drama Department archives in 2022.
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