Lecture, Lunch and Film Klassisches Oktoberfest
10:30 - 11:00 am – Welcome & Sign In
11:00 am – Lecture “Shakespeare and the German Romantics: A Mutual Legacy”
Drew Lichtenberg, Literary Manager & Resident Dramaturg, Shakespeare Theatre Company
This talk examines the “big bang” of German drama: the explosion of playwriting and dramatic theorizing in a remarkably fertile short period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was one driven, first and foremost, by the rediscovery of Shakespeare, which allowed German artists and intellectuals to break from the Neoclassicism of the French school and invent their own dramatic canon, inventing what it means to be German at the same time. Focusing on the various ways that leading German thinkers have interpreted Shakespeare’s legacy, this talk will constitute a critical take on the dualistic and mutually reinforcing legacy of Germanic Bardophilia: how Shakespeare gave Germans the ability to tell their own stories, and how, in so doing, they “Germanized” Shakespeare himself.
Drew Lichtenberg is Literary Manager and Resident Dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., where he has worked as production dramaturg on more than 30 productions over five seasons. He has also worked as a dramaturg with the Royal National Theatre, London, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre Center at Princeton University, Baltimore Center Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Public Theater’s New York Shakespeare Festival. He currently teaches German theater traditions and Shakespeare’s dramaturgy at Eugene Lang College at the New School in New York City. He has also taught at Catholic University of America, mentored student dramaturgs at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival, and appeared as a guest teaching artist at numerous Washington area colleges. He holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, where he is a writing fellow.
12:30 pm – Catered Oktoberfest lunch served in the GoetheForum
2:00 pm – Film A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Dir. Max Reinhardt, 1935)
Organized by the American Goethe Society.
Cost (including lunch: $30 members and their guest(s), $35 non-members
Registration and advanced ticket payment required no later than 10/15/2016. Please send a check payable to AGS to: Dr. Nicholas Fessenden, AGS Treasurer, 7324 Kindler Rd., Columbia, MD 21046
For further ticketing and membership information, please visit the AGS website or email:
nicholasfessenden@comcast.net