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580 Book Reviews resulting volume must become the standard work on Kokoschka as painter and playwright for some time to come. J.M. RITCHIE, UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD MICHAEL PATTERSON. Peter Stein: Germany's Leading Theatre Director. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981. Pp. xv, 186, illustrated. $32.50; $10.95 (PB). Most critics and even historians of theater tend to neglect the production aspect of the stage as though it were incidental to the dramatic texts. The plays, their interpretations, and the lives of the authors and some directors and actors are amply discussed, but the specific conditions of production have generally been shortchanged. Thus, the new Cambridge University Series entitled "Directors in Perspective" under the general editorship of C.D. Innes is to be greeted. And, if the forthcoming books retain anything ofthe quality to be found in Michael Patterson's fine study ofPeterStein, then the series will be of major importance for scholarship in the field. Though directors have always played a major role in Germany - one need only think ofReinhardt, Piscator, Brecht, and Kortner, to name but a few - their work has not been as meticulously documented in relation to the social and political conditions of their times as the work ofthe German playwrights, nor are other "productionhands" analyzed and studied for their influence on the development of actors, playwrights, and even the designs of theaters. Patterson takes a giant step to remedy this situation in his book on Stein by viewing him in the context ofthe production conditions ofGermany. And, since Stein has become one of the major forces shaping German theater, if not European theater, knowledge of his work and methods will enable us to learn more about the experiments and trends in German and continental European theater. Patterson's goal is to examine three aspects of Stein's work: the plays that Stein has produced, the structure within which he works, and the man himself. His book is divided into eight chapters and moves chronologically from Stein's student years in Munich, when he served an apprenticeship under Kortner at the Munich Kammerspiele, to Stein's rise as the politically provocative director ofthe Schaubiihne am Halleschen Ufer, which is no longer, thanks to Stein, located in a working-class district of Berlin, but is now situated on the neon-lit Kurfiirstendamm and may have ironically lost its significant cultural-political mission, again thanks to Stein, who embodied that mission. There are three major phases in Stein's development that are studied in thorough fashion by Patterson. The firstphase in which Stein absorbed all he could from Kortner, the master of detail, precision, and clarity, involved Stein's productions of Bond's Saved, Brecht's In the Jungle of the Cities, and Weiss's Vietnam Discourse at the Werkraum Theater in Munich between 1967 and 1968, and also his production of Schiller's Love and Intrigue in Bremen. Patterson presents a vivid picture of each production and Stein's collaboration with dramaturges, actors, set designers, and other stage workers. Here Patterson focuses on Stein's efforts to demand a new way oflooking at the plays that would raise the social and political consciousness of the audience. ,( Yet, Stein was not a political director in his.Munichyears. As Bruno qanz, one ofthe foremost politically engaged actors in Germany and an early partictpant in Stein's Book Reviews productions, has remarked: "Of course, Stein only really woke up as a result of the student riots." That is, Stein, the acute social and artistic observer, who relied heavily on naturalistic devices to incorporate remarkable political and philosophical insights into his productions to make them vital for the present, began to assume an active role in changing the working conditions in the theater, the repertories; and the cultural policies of the state and municipal theaters only toward the end of 1968. During 1968-69, his second phase, Stein worked on plays in Bremen and Zurich, essentially revising Goethe, Bond, O'Casey, and Middleton and Rowley to focus on the underlying political meanings of their plays. Since Stein depended on collective work, he began to seek out those collaborators who were to make their mark on German theater history by moving...

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