Peter Englund Reading II: Schönheit und Schrecken

CAST

Fritz Egger, Johannes Silberschneider, Katharina Stemberger, Jürgen Tarrach and Martin Vischer

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

The Beauty and the Sorrow
Historian Peter Englund presents the unfolding of the Great War through the eyes of 19 witnesses from nations as far apart as Venezuela and Hungary, Denmark and New Zealand. The youngest is twelve and the oldest is forty-five when the war begins. Not all of them will live to see its end. Reconstructed with the aid of diaries, letters and journals, what emerges is an alternative history to that of great battles and public events, narrated through a skilful montage of dramatic monologues. Here we are told of intimate, personal experiences and sentiments which are not acknowledged in the public sphere. Five actors read specially selected passages from this brilliant and uncoventional history.

Peter Englund is Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature.