SOURCE: Crosby, Donald H. “The German Stage-Image of Goethe, 1969-1981.” In Goethe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Alexej Ugrinsky, pp. 29-35. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Crosby considers some contemporary interpretations of Tasso, Iphigenie, and Faust on the German stage in order to “provide at least an outline of the current stage image of Goethe.”

“As you know, the German stage lets each one try what he may.” 

—Goethe, Faust

The words of that ever-quotable pragmatist, the Theater Director of Faust, are if anything truer today than they were in Goethe's own time. After a postwar period of reconstruction, the German stage over the past two decades has once again become a proving ground for directorial innovation. Spawned from the political and social ferment of the 1960s, an impressive cadre of fresh directorial talent has succeeded in reviving the tradition of creative, interpretive direction...