Dea Loher: Three Plays - Paperback

by Dea Loher (Author), David Tushingham (Translator)

Dea Loher is one of the most powerful and individual voices in German theatre today. This volume brings together three of her plays, translated into English.

Olga's Room

Communist. Jew. Revolutionary. Lover. Mother. Olga Benario's story is a searing tale of survival as alongside her fellow prisoners she struggles to hold onto her disintegrating sense of self. Based on real events of the 1930s-40s, Dea Loher's gripping first play spans Brazilian revolution and Nazi dictatorship.

Innocence

A city by the sea. 14 people on the edge. Illegal immigrants afraid of being arrested for a good deed. A philosopher who burns her own books. A woman seeking forgiveness for crimes she didn't commit. A young married man who finds fulfillment laying out corpses. A blind stripper who spends her life being watched by men she cannot see. Innocence is a darkly comic panorama of urban restlessness.

Land Without Words

War meets art in this intimate parable. A painter seeks the perfect image, but in K., a Middle Eastern city, she experiences the effects of war, violence and poverty, impossible to depict. Now she is forced to confront her lifelong beliefs in the value of art, and how to deal with her position in the world today.

Dea Loher is one of Germany's most highly regarded contemporary playwrights. Her plays have been translated into over fifteen languages and staged all over the world. They include Tatowierung, Stranger's House (Fremdes Haus), Adam Geist, Innocence (Unschuld), The Final Fire (Das Letzte Feuer), Thieves (Diebe) and Black Lake (Am Schwarzen See). She has won numerous awards including the Else-Lasker-Schuler-Dramatikerpreis (2005), the Bertolt-Brecht-Preis der Stadt Augsburg (2006), and the Berliner Literaturpreis (2009). Currently living in Berlin, her most recent work is a novel, Bugatti taucht auf.

David Tushingham's translations include: Mr. Kolpert, The Woman Before, Waiting Room Germany, Stranger's House (Royal Court), The Golden Dragon, Arabian Night, Jeff Koons (ATC) and State of Emergency (Gate Theatre). He has worked as a dramaturg for numerous high-profile European institutions and is currently Artistic Advisor to the Salzburg Festival.

Author Biography

Dea Loher's plays have been translated into many languages and staged all over the world, including Australia, Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Japan and Latin America. Dea Loher received such highly regarded German drama awards as the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatikerpreis (2005), the Bertolt-Brecht-Preis der Stadt Augsburg (2006), the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis (1998 and 2008), the Marieluise-Fleißer- Preis (2009) and the Berliner Literaturpreis (2009).

David Tushingham works as a dramaturg and curator for the Salzburg Festival and the Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus. He has adapted Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories for The National Theatre, London and translated plays by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Dea Loher, Falk Richter and numerous other contemporary German playwrights. His recent translation of Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon has been performed in London, Edinburgh, Washington D.C., Toronto, Pittsburgh, Melbourne and on tour in India, Kurdistan and Ireland.