Danton’s Death
A play of memory—shadows, reflections and echoes—Danton’s Death traces, in the history of the French Revolution, the destruction of heroic figures, an outline of a human form of despair in a life that is fragmented and unsustained.
Written by Georg BüchnerTranslated by Hedwig RappoltDirected by Linda Mussmann“The revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children. ”
1979
Previews at TSL Storefront, NYC
1980
Toronto Free Theater, Canada
“The Revolutionists’ rhetoric is treated as rhetoric, and percussion, pipes, vocal accompaniments and echoes take precedence. Danton even plays violin…
A theatre sequence, a shadow-play and the resounding Convention chamber — sketched in by deployment of ropes, slender wands and the interplay of spotlights…”
—Herbert Whittaker, The Globe and Mail
performers: Paul Peeling, Shelly Beach, Claudia Bruce, Tony Zanetta, Betty LaRoe, James Howley, Nancy McDonald
“I have been reading the history of the Revolution. I felt as though crushed by the hideous fatalism of history. I find in human nature a terrifying sameness, in human institutions an irresistible power, bestowed on all and on none. The individual mere foam on the wave, greatness a mere accident, the sovereignty of genius only a puppet-play, a ridiculous struggling against an iron law, to recognize it is our highest achievement, to control it impossible.” —Georg Büchner
1981
La Mama Annex, NYC
music composed by Dan Erkkila
performers: Claudia Bruce, Bill Christ, Jeannine Haas, Ron King, Betty LaRoe, Marc Murray, Ron Nakahara, Ann Shea, Jim Bering, Richard Toma
musicians: Dan Erkkila, Paul Glasso, Guy Klucevsek, Michael Sirotta
stage manager: John A. Jewell
set designer: Jun Maeda
costumes & lights: Linda Mussmann
“Jun Maeda’s gargantuan environment is a rustic tinker-toy palace of rough-hewn poles which also resembles a sailing vessel (Büchner’s Ship of the Revolution?). The floor is covered with wrinkled white canvas, on which the performers gambol in tightly orchestrated movements or writhe in stylized agony. Canister lights are raised and lowered by the actors, who are uniformly dressed in white, modified-Mao costume which economically suggest in turn aristocratic elegance or the practical plebeianism of the sans-culottes.”
— Roderick Mason Faber, The Village Voice
Radio Play
Music composed and performed by Semih Fırıncıoğlu
Performed by Claudia Bruce & Brigitte Bley-Swinston
1989
WDR Cologne Radio, Germany
2nd Aucustica International, The Whitney Museum, NYC
1990
Goethe-Institut Kanada, Montreal
Semih Fırıncıoğlu and Claudia Bruce, Whitney Museum of American Art 1990
In 1989, Klaus Schöning of WDR Radio Cologne commissioned Mussmann to adapt her original version of the play for a one hour broadcast. This was aired in Germany as part of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. In 1990, Schöning organized the 2nd Acoustica Festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Equitable Center) in New York City and, once again, asked Mussmann to shorten her version to “close to 30 minutes.” In April, this version was performed at the festival and aired by public station WNYC along with works by European and American radio artists, including John Cage, Alison Knowles, and Charles Amirkhanian. In May, Danton’s Death was performed in Montreal, Canada, and aired on the Canadian Broadcasting system.
