Kroetz and Handke: A Comparison

Abstract

To introduce the theatre of Peter Handke and Franz Xaver Kroetz it may be useful to make a comparative analysis of Handke’s mime play My Foot My Tutor (1969) and three Kroetz plays — The Choice For Life (1973/1980), Stalierhof (1972) and Ghost Train (1972). I will base my comments partly on my production of My Foot My Tutor, which I directed in London in 1973 and on the production of The Choice For Life, broadcast as a radio play in 1973, revised for the stage by Kroetz and directed by Hartmut Baum in Munich in 1980. Like My Foot My Tutor, Stalierhof and Ghost Train are set in primitive rural circumstances and consist of short elliptical scenes; they share an attention to minute ordinary detail. The attitudes towards ‘language’ and the basic sets of relationships in Handke’s mime play and Kroetz’s dialect pieces about semi-articulate people, Stalierhof and Ghost Train, have similarities and in each case are typical of the authors’ work.