Horizon Theatre Rep Presents GEIST

Horizon Theatre Rep (Rafael De Mussa, Artistic Director) has announced the streaming series of German Plays from the 1910s & 1920s. The plays will be directed by Rafael De Mussa and will stream at www.htronline.org.

Plays by August Stramm, Oscar Kokoschka, Franz Kafka, Ernst Toller, Gottfried Benn, Lothar Schreyer, Walter Hasenclever, and Georg Kaiser.

All streaming performances are free and will be delivered via short video format. New segments to be added monthly.

Rafael De Mussa Director has been managing an Off Off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to seldom-produced plays for over fourteen years. Under his leadership Horizon Theatre Rep has produced 15 main stage productions by some of the world's greatest writers, garnering critical acclaim and consistently employing an eclectic family of artists to better reflect New York City's diversity of thought.

August Stramm (29 July 1874 - 1 September 1915) was a German war poet and playwright who is considered the first of the expressionists. Stramm's radically experimental verse and his major influence on all subsequent German poetry has caused him to be compared to Ezra Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot. A reserve officer in the Imperial German Army, Stramm was called up to active service at the outbreak of World War I and was killed in action on the Eastern Front, Sept 01 1915.

Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 - 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expressionist movement. Kokoschka died February 22, 1980, in Montreux, Switzerland.

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 - 3 June 1924) was a German Speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio- bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing. He died June 1924 in Kierling, Klosterneuburg, Austria from tuberculosis.

Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 - 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays that gained him international renown. He died by suicide May 22nd 1939.

Gottfried Benn (2 May 1886 - 7 July 1956) was a German poet, essayist, and physician. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1951. Benn's poetry and plays projects an introverted nihilism, that is, an existentialist outlook that views artistic expression as the only purposeful action. In his early poems Benn used his medical experience, often using medical terminology, to portray humanity morbidly as just another species of disease-ridden animal. He died of cancer in West Berlin July 7th 1956, and was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem, Berlin.

Lothar Schreyer (1886 in Blasewitz - 1966 in Hamburg) was a German artist, writer, editor, stage designer and gallery owner. He was the first Master of the stagecraft workshop at the Bauhaus art school. In 1918 Scheyer founded the Sturmbühne, an expressionist theatre. Schreyer's first plays Kreuzigung (Crucifixion) and Kindssterben (Death of a Child) were performed during his tenure as director there. He died August 19th, 1966, in Hamburg, Federal Republic of Germany.

Walter Georg Alfred Hasenclever (8 July 1890 - 22 June 1940) was a German Expressionist poet and playwright. In 1910 he published his first volume of poems, Towns, nights and people (Städte, Nächte und Menschen). In 1914 his play The Son (Der Sohn) was his first successful Expressionist drama. His works were banned when the Nazis came to power and he went into exile in France; however, there he was imprisoned as a "foreign enemy". He died June 21 1940 in Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence.

Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, (25 November 1878 - 4 June 1945) was a German dramatist. He was highly prolific and wrote in a number of different styles.An Expressionist dramatist, he was, along with Gerhart Hauptmann, the most frequently performed playwright of the Weimar Republic. Georg Kaiser's plays include The Burghers of Calais (1913), From Morning to Midnight (1912), and a trilogy, comprising The Coral (1917), Gas (1918), Gas II (1920). He died June 7th, 1945, in Ascona, Switzerland.

Horizon Theatre Rep founded 2000 and led by Rafael De Mussa, endeavors to find a contemporary vocabulary to tell stories on stage and film, and to bridge the generation gap.

Horizon Theatre Rep 2023 2024 season is being made possible by a generous grant from the Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust. Materials for the Arts- NYC's Creative Reuse Center, Google Ad Grants -a generous program of Google, and by viewers like you.

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