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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067 – Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams

Sep 27, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Tyrell William’s award-winning, debut play Red Pitch is set on an inner-city football pitch in South London. It is a coming-of-age story, with teenage boys fighting to believe in their dreams, and to find a way up, and perhaps out, of their changing community. The play premiered at the Bush Theatre in London in February 2002, winning several awards, and is currently enjoying a sell-out revival at the Bush.

Tyrell Williams, and the show’s director, Daniel Bailey, join me to explore this joyful and poignant new play.

Photo by Helen Murray.

066 – The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

Aug 23, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Martin McDonagh’s 2004 play The Pillowman is an unsettling mix of gruesome fairy tales, child abuse, and murder, overlaid with McDonagh’s signature black humour. McDonagh’s blend of extreme violence and ironic comedy divides opinion, although the popularity of the current revival of the play in London’s West End is testimony to its enduring fascination.

I am joined in this episode by Professor Eamonn Jordan, to help us come to terms with the impact and intent of McDonagh’s work.

065 – Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Jul 31, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo and Franca Rame is both an hilarious farce and a biting satire. Written in 1970 as an “act of intervention” in response to the unexplained death of a prisoner in police custody in Milan, it became a huge global hit.

An acclaimed new adaptation that updates the setting and scandal to modern-day Britain is currently playing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and I’m delighted to be joined by its writer, Tom Basden, and the director, Daniel Raggett, to talk about their adaptation and the enduring relevance of Fo’s original.