Rudolf Steiner and Drama

Steiner was first a drama critic, then a director, and finally playwright, with four full-length dramas to his name.

Quotes

Margarita Voloschin:
Then I asked why he had the drama by Eduard Schuré performed in Munich. "It seems to me inartistic, like a poor reproduction." "I am glad you find it inartistic; so do I. But I can not allow the naturalistic dramas of Gerhard Hauptmann to be played!" He considered Hauptmann to be a very gifted dramatist, "… but his plays are not what people need in their present situation." "Couldn't one then perform Aeschylus or Sophocles?" I "instructed" Rudolf Steiner. "With these players? Oh no! I have too much respect for those great spirits to dare to attempt it with the persons available to me. You see," he continued, "you are a contemplative nature, but I must be active. And I must work with the material I have at hand." He looked at me "Are you dissatisfied?" (Ist es Ihnen unsympatisch?") – "Yes," I confessed, and thought with consternation: perhaps he gives us also in other spheres only that which we need, and not the absolute!"
Belyi, Andrei, Turgenieff, Aasya, Voloschin, Margarita. Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner. Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 1987. Page 131-1322. (Margarita Voloschin, written around 1950).

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