Karen Leeder Archives - The Play Podcast

Karen Leeder

by Douglas Schatz | Nov 21, 2022 | Contributor

Karen Leeder

Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at New College, Oxford. Karen studied German at Oxford and the University of Hamburg. After teaching for three years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, she took up her Fellowship at New College in 1993 and became Professor of Modern German Literature in 2008, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 and Fellow of the Academia Europaea in 2020.

She is a prize-winning translator of contemporary literature and has published widely on modern German culture, especially of the post-1945 and contemporary periods.

In 2016 she received an English PEN and an American PEN award for her translations of Ulrike Almut Sandig Thick of it. She is a Trustee of the Stephen Spender Trust and the Poetry Translation Centre and regularly appears on radio and television talking about aspects of German culture.

Photo: Stefan Rumpf

Podcast Episode(s)

055 - Spring Awakening, by Frank Wedekind

Recommended Play(s)

Karen recommended Woyzeck by Georg Buchner.

055 – Spring Awakening, by Frank Wedekind

by Douglas Schatz | Nov 21, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

Spring Awakening – A New Musical
Almeida Theatre London 2022
Photo by Marc Brenner

055 – Spring Awakening, by Frank Wedekind

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German playwright Frank Wedekind’s dark, expressionist play Spring Awakening – A Children’s Tragedy was written in 1891. It is an extraordinarily frank depiction of teenage anxiety and sexuality, which includes graphic scenes of masturbation, sado-masochism, homosexuality and rape, as well as suicide and abortion. The play was so controversial in its time that it was 15 years before it was first performed in 1906 in Berlin, and only then with cuts demanded by the censor. It is a nightmarish, cautionary portrait of adolescent angst and rebellion against oppressive social strictures and family expectations.

The play is also the unlikely source for the modern rock musical of the same name, which premiered on Broadway in 2006, and was recently revived at the Almeida Theatre in London in a storming new production directed by their Artistic Director, Rupert Goold. The musical retains much of the dark narrative of the original, adding a score that enunciates all of the young people’s yearnings, fears and frustrations, as well as their hopeful energy and defiance, though it arguably also softens some of the shock of Wedekind’s original play.

To talk us through the contemporary controversies and enduring power of Spring Awakening, I’m delighted to welcome the Professor of Modern German Literature at New College, Oxford, Karen Leeder.

Professor Karen Leeder

Karen Leeder studied German at Oxford and the University of Hamburg. After teaching for three years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, she took up her Fellowship at New College in 1993 and became Professor of Modern German Literature in 2008, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 and Fellow of the Academia Europaea in 2020.

She is a prize-winning translator of contemporary literature and has published widely on modern German culture, especially of the post-1945 and contemporary periods.

Recommended Play

Karen recommended Woyzeck by Georg Buchner.

Photo by Stefan Rumpf

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Spring Awakening include observations on how Wedekind’s own life reflected events and values contained in the play; notes on how the first production was finally able to take place fifteen years after the play was written; and some of the parallels with Goethe’s Faust.

Footnotes for Patrons

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The Texts

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.