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This Blog is hosted by Traditions & Editions Theatre Circus and dedicated to our up coming production in May 2011. It serves to record an exciting journey of all artists involved in the production. We would like to share our innocent excitement, wild ideas, crazy imaginations, sincere love... and even joyous frustrations and confusions during this process.

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Friday, February 4, 2011

Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende - The Grand Magician! (Playwright)

Michael Andreas 
Helmuth Ende
(12 November 1929 
– 28 August 1995)

Michael Ende was a German writer of fantasy and children's literature. He was born in Garmisch (Bavaria, Germany), son of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. He died in Filderstadt (Germany) of stomach cancer.

 The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte) is Ende's best known work. Other books include Momo and Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer). Michael Ende's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 20 million copies, and have been adapted into motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books.

Ende was one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to the enormous success of his children's books. However, Ende was not strictly a children's author, as he also wrote books for adults. Ende claimed, "It is for this child in me, and in all of us, that I tell my stories," and that "[my books are] for any child between 80 and 8 years" (qtd. Senick 95, 97). Ende often found frustration in being perceived as exclusively an author for children, considering himself rather a man intending to speak of cultural problems and spiritual wisdom to people of all ages in his works; he wrote in 1985:
"One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about."

Ende's writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and fantasy. The reader is often invited to take a more interactive role in the story, and the worlds in his books often mirror our reality, using fantasy to bring light to the problems of an increasingly technological modern society. Not least of all because of having attended a Waldorf school as a child, his writings were influenced by anthroposophy. Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of aging money in mind when writing Momo.


Books written by Michael Ende
  • 1989 Night of Wishes / The Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion
(Der satanarchaolugenialkohollische Wunschpunsch)
Summary: Beelzebub Preposteror is a diligent sorcerer, but this year he has failed to meet his quota of villainous deeds, because the High Council of Animals has sent a small cat spy to foil his plans.

  • 1988 Ophelia's Shadow Theatre
  • 1986 Mirror in the Mirror (Der Spiegel im Spiegel)
  • 1982 Juggler's Tale (Das Gauklermarchen)
  • 1979 The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
Summary: Story about a lonely, solitary boy who enters an imaginary land on a special and dangerous quest, where he learns the true measure of his own courage and realizes that even he has the capacity to love.

  • 1973 Momo (original English 1974 translation published as The Grey Gentlemen)
  • 1960 Jim Kompf and Lukas the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivfuhrer)
Summary: Having turned their railroad engine into a boat and set sail for adventure because their island has become too crowded, Jim Button and Luke try to rescue the kidnapped Princess of China from Dragontown.

  • The Prison of Liberty
Summary: This is a collection of short stories by Ende that examine different and true characteristics of human society, values, and dreams in a context of fantastic and unimaginable lands and realities.


Notes:

According to research, The Juggler’s Tale has never been translated in 
English in prints. There are other arts groups who had performed this script 
in other languages and simply have not circulated or published their translations.

TETC is aiming to translate it into multi-languages with a general overtone 
in English. This is a tough task! – To respect and maintain the spirit of the 
original play with the assistance from native-German-speakers, incorporating 
newfound interpretations by the casts and director.

See you in May! A brand new version of 
The Juggler’s Tale – World Première! (Singapore)

1 comment:

  1. HI I'm wondering if you have a script you could share. My waldorf school is considering putting this play on, but our script is quite choppy. Thanks. Laura

    ReplyDelete