Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter by Tankred Dorst and translated by Michael Roloff.

Written by one of the masters of contemporary German language theatre, this play of emotions explores, in the words of Dorst, "The discrepancy between utopia and reality." Wealthy, successful Fernando Krapp returns to town and arranges to marry Julia, the beautiful young daughter of a poor man. Julia resents the forced marriage, falls in love with a Count, and hides in romanticism, distraught by her conflicting feelings.

Auditions: August 26 & 27, more information here

The following synopsis came from: Drama Contemporary: Germany, edited by Carl Weber, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Fernando Krapp Wrote me This Letter, written by Tankred Dorst—one of the masters of contemporary German theatre— had its premiere on May 15,1992 at The Akademietheater—a part of the Wiener Burgtheater.

The play is about a wealthy, successful, and determined Fernando Krapp who returns to his hometown after making his fortune. Told in a stylized, bittersweet comic style, the story deals with Krapp’s single-minded need to control. At first he arranges to marry Julia, the beautiful young daughter of a local man down on his luck. Julia resents the forced marriage and falls in love with a local Count who has also seen better times. Julia hides her romantic interest and becomes distraught by her conflicting feelings for her husband, Fernando. Despite himself, the confident and controlling Fernando opens up emotionally and falls in love. Rather than admitting he has neglected his wife emotionally he convinces her, two local psychiatrists, and the Count, that she is crazy. Fernando will do anything to keep and control his Julia. But Fernando learns the meaning of love too late, and despite his faults, Julia sees that she is truly loved and loves her husband.

Tankred Dorst once remarked that he always was intrigued by “the overwhelming power of the imagination, of fears and also of utopian dreams, and its conquests of reality—the discrepancy between utopia and reality, between the person you would like to be and the one you are.” This “power of the imagination” was the theme of many of his plays. Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter vividly presents a protagonist who decides to shape himself, the world, and the people who surround him according to a dream he desires to live. But like many dreamers and idealists, by searching for his dream in the pursuit of this impossible reality, Fernando destroys the object of his desire as well as himself.

The play’s narrative was inspired by the novella by Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) the Spanish Basque writer and philosopher. The novella entitled Nada meno que todo un hombre (Nothing Less Than a Man), is a minimalist, fable-like tale boiled down even further by Dorst and his collaborator, Ursula Ehler, his wife. Dorst uses some verbatim elements and passages from the original novella where dramatically appropriate. In other instances however, Dorst takes liberties, not to contemporize the story but rather to pare it to its barest essence and unique stylization.

Tankred Dorst was born in 1925, in a small town in Thuringia, the son of an engineer and factory owner. His father died when he was five years old. In 1943, while still in high school, Dorst was drafted into the Labor Service and then the army at the Western front, where he became a prisoner of war in 1944. He spent three years in prison camps in England and the United States and returned to West Germany to finish his high school. In the 1950s, he continued to study art history, literature, and theatre at Bamberg and Munich Universities. While in Munich, he wrote a number of plays for a marionette theatre group, and in 1960 he received the first major productions of his plays.

From the 1960s through the 1990s, Dorst was one of the most prolific and widely produced playwrights in the German-speaking world. He has worked with internationally reputed directors like Robert Wilson creating visual operas and libretti along with realistic family dramas, plays of pure fantasy, and films.

Much of Dorst’s writing focuses on the confrontation of the personal with general history—the ways societal forces intrude upon the private realm. Many critics, such as Carl Weber, attribute Dorst’s preoccupation to the experiences of his youth in Nazi Germany and the events that shaped his country’s history during the forty years of a divided Germany.

When he was invited to join the (West) German Academy of Sciences, Dorst ended his acceptance speech with these words:"How can we live? is what all of my theatre pieces ask. What power is driving us into our deeds and out crimes, into madness? What dark move of our imagination will drive us eventually into war and the end of it all? Nothing is certain, and the truth that we are striving for in our lives and our writings is not to be found.”