Literary scholarship creates a stage for forgotten female playwrights

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Literary scholar Dr. Anna Axtner-Borsutzky is experiencing the power of original research in German philology and how it can enrich and enliven our culture. In the collaborative and interdisciplinary project “Lost in archives. In search of hidden women in male domains in the 18th and 19th centuries,” she undertakes research with the goal of making female playwrights from the period 1770 to 1820 visible again.

Just over a year since the project launched, a forgotten drama is being revived at Darmstadt State Theater. In the bar of the studio theater, two actors dressed in white are sitting at a table in front of a white screen. On the white tablecloth, there are opulent silver bowls with grapes. The ensemble is performing a staged reading of the tragedy Dido by Charlotte von Stein, which Axtner-Borsutzky has rescued from neglect in the course of her research project. A play that was almost unknown until recently, and which is still not available in bookstores, from a female author whose activity as a playwright was long forgotten, is being brought to life on the stage.

About the tragedy “Dido” by Charlotte von Stein:

Charlotte von Stein’s tragedy Dido was completed in 1794. In contrast to Virgil’s Aeneid, the action centers not on Aeneas, but on the Carthaginian queen Dido, who gives up her life to save her country from war. The play focuses on the female protagonist, dramatizing her decisions for the good of her kingdom and the options available to her as queen.
(Professor Gaby Pailer, University of British Columbia, is currently planning an edition of “Dido.”)

A stage for female authors who have stood in the shadows for too long

Charlotte von Stein’s play kicks off the “Unheard of!” series at Darmstadt State Theater. The theater is shining a spotlight on female dramatists, whose traces Axtner-Borsutzky, the doctoral researcher in the project, Sunna Kroy, and student assistants have pursued in the card indexes of libraries and in private and public archives.

“In this series of readings, we encounter female authors from all eras who have stood too long in the shadows. At the bar, texts are being reread, interrogated, and returned to the stage in a process involving a mixture of research, reading, necromancy, and vibrant dialog with the present.” This is how Carlotta Huys, dramaturge at Darmstadt State Theater, describes the project, which she is tackling together with director Olivia Müller-Elmau in collaboration with LMU, University of the Bundeswehr Munich (focus on military literature), and Goethe University Frankfurt (focus on literary criticism).

Huys studied theater and philosophy at LMU. Inspired by an opera series that brings the works of long neglected and little performed female composers to the stage, Huys was looking to do something similar for drama. When a friend from her student days who works at the theater museum in Munich told her about the work of Lost in Archives, Huys contacted Axtner-Borsutzky and her team. “We launched into an enthusiastic exchange about forgotten female authors and lost works. The researchers pointed us to particularly interesting, rediscovered female dramatists and suggested plays that might be suitable for a staged reading,” recalls Huys.

Original research in humanities reaches a wider audience

“The performance of Dido struck a powerful chord with people,” recalls Huys. “We invited the audience in the bar of the studio theater to take small roles in the play – as soldiers, say, or citizens – and then after the staged reading to eat grapes with us and have a drink and a chat.” For over an hour, audience members had a lively discussion with the makers. “The play poses questions that are extremely relevant to our times,” says Huys. “Who defends a country? Does one have to defend a country? What is one willing to sacrifice for this cause? The way in which von Stein questions cultural norms, often through humor, also conspicuously hit home with the audience.”

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Anna Axtner-Borsutzky is pleased that her research is reaching a wider public. “Indeed, I’m often left speechless at the resonance this project has,” she says. She is quick to point out that she and her team are building on the work of other researchers. “With our project, we’re joining a large community of people who are actively working on recovering forgotten women from the historical shadows.” In this way, academic research enters into dialog with passionately committed partners in many institutions and a general public that has become curious.

“Things are happening everywhere,” recounts Axtner-Borsutzky. Because many plays from forgotten female playwrights are still either not available or only as digital copies in old Gothic typeface, plans are being elaborated for a publishing project that will specialize in tragedies from forgotten female playwrights and present them as critical selected editions.

Axtner-Borsutzky and Frankfurt project leader Marília Jöhnk gave a lecture in the “Focus on Innovative Women” series where they discussed how the traces and networks of forgotten female dramatists can be displayed in the Fact Grid database, which is funded by the German government. This brought them into contact with a Wikipedia editor who explained systematic methods for making the playwrights visible and easier for the public to find on the online encyclopedia.

“For me, one of the loveliest examples of this inspiring interplay between research and the public has been developing our planned traveling exhibition on forgotten female authors,” says Axtner-Borsutzky. Discussions are underway with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar: “We weren’t the ones to inquire, rather they approached us about hosting the exhibition,” says Axtner-Borsutzky. “We experience this time and again with this project – conversations and common interests give rise to connections and multiplier effects, which in their turn lead to inquiries and joint initiatives.”

Philological detective work and searching for traces in the archives

The literary scholar was delighted recently when the pursuit of various leads took her to the dramatist Amalie von Liebhaber. In the literary archives in Marbach, her team found a bundle of dramas and manuscripts from the contemporary of Goethe, who, it transpires, wrote more than 15 plays, including dramas with themes from Arabian Nights, the Nibelung saga, and Roman plays.

“We found newspaper articles about her as well as encyclopedia entries and an obituary. She exchanged letters with Goethe and Tieck. She traveled a lot, and we can follow her traces throughout Europe,” says Axtner-Borsutzky. “Indeed I’d go as far as to say: Her name is completely unknown. After her death, we lose track of her. This was a very special find for us.” Axtner-Borsutzky and her team set about editing and transcribing parts of the oeuvre of Amalie von Liebhaber out of over a dozen fragments.

Before this season is out, the “Unheard of!” series at Darmstadt State Theater plans to stage even more plays by forgotten female playwrights who have been rediscovered through the work of Lost in Archives. And so perhaps Amalie von Liebhaber too will enrich the theater of the present with one of her dramas more than 180 years after her death.

Next staged reading

The next staged reading in the “Unheard of!” series will take place in the studio theater bar at Darmstadt Theater on 8 March (director: Olivia Müller-Elmau). The ensemble will be performing the play „Die Kostgängerin im Nonnenkloster“ (“The Boarder in the Convent”) by Elise Müller, whose name and oeuvre had been forgotten despite her great literary talent.
Another event in the series is planned for 27 May.