''The Son'' (german: Der Sohn) is a five-act
Expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
play by the German playwright
Walter Hasenclever. It was the first self-proclaimed, full-length Expressionist play to be produced, though its
dramatic structure is more or less
realistic. It takes as its subject the conflict between the generations and a rejection of the world in general by the young. It is a semi-
autobiographical work.
It was written in 1912, first published in 1914, and first performed in 1916 at the
Albert-Theater in
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
, although Hasenclever had read the play at the literary
cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...
''Das Gnu'' in early 1914.
Ernst Deutsch
Ernst Deutsch, also known as Ernest Dorian (16 September 1890 – 22 March 1969), was a Jewish Austrian actor. In 1916, his performance as the protagonist in the world première of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play '' The Son'' in Dresde ...
played the Son to great acclaim.
The play ends with the Son killing his father. He then "strides triumphantly over his father's corpse into a future full of glorious potential".
[Kuhns (1997, 36).]
References
;Sources
* Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Hasenclever, Walter. 1994. ''Der Sohn. Ein Drama in fünf Akten. Nachw. v. Michael Schulz.'' Stuttgart: Reclam. .
* Kuhns, David F. 1997. ''German Expressionist Theatre: The Actor and the Stage.'' New ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. .
* Marx, Henry, trans. 1997. ''The Son.'' By Walter Hasenclever. In Schürer (1997a, 82-145).
* Rorrison, Hugh. 1998. "Hasenclever, Walter." In Banham (1998, 475).
* Schürer, Ernst, ed. 1997a. ''German Expressionist Plays.'' The German Library ser. vol. 66. New York: Continuum. .
* ---. 1997b. Introduction. In Schürer (1997a, vii-xxi).
* Wellwarth, George E. 2002. "Expressionism." In ''The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama''. Ed. John Gassner and Edward Quinn. Mineola, NY: Dover. 256-261. .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Son, The
1914 plays
1916 plays
Expressionist plays
German plays