Why Strindberg Matters by / Bennett Fisher

It’s likely that most theatre-goers in this country know August Strindberg only as “that other guy” who was not Ibsen or Chekhov. They’ve been told he wrote a play named “Miss Julie,” which they haven’t seen. They’ve been told he was a misogynist, which they are inclined to believe. However, in honor of the 100th anniversary of his death this year, it’s worthwhile to take a closer look at what he has to teach.

“Strindberg is a strong candidate for father of modern drama,” says translator Paul Walsh, “but, if he is, he’s an absentee father, since he is so absent from our stages.” Indeed, Strindberg’s 63 plays and countless essays on performance and stagecraft demonstrate a remarkable range of styles and approaches. Many great American dramatists—Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee and especially Tennessee Williams— credit Strindberg as a major influence. Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” takes more than a few pages from Strindberg’s “Dance of Death,” and Williams’s memory plays draw heavily from the dreamscapes in Strindberg’s work. Strindberg’s impact on American drama can be seen in content as well as style. Many Strindberg plays delve deeply into what we’ve come to call “the life lie” in American drama—the tragedy of following impossible dreams or turning a blind eye to the world’s hypocrisy. He may have largely passed from the collective memory a hundred years on, but, reading his plays and considering when they were written, the footprint he left is undeniable.

Strindberg, along with Chekhov and Ibsen, pioneered realism on the stage with plays like “The Father” and “Miss Julie,” but later in his career dove into the wildly expressionistic and surreal with work like “A Dream Play,” “The Ghost Sonata” and “The Great Highway”—diversifying and experimenting in a way that Chekhov and Ibsen never achieved. This, arguably, is the real gift that Strindberg has left us. When many artists might be content to repeat their past successes and use the same formula for each new project, Strindberg’s life and plays stand as a testament to the value of continued exploration.

This year and next, Strindberg is making a reappearance in the Bay Area. Opening October 12, Cutting Ball’s production of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays in Rep will allow audiences an opportunity to see—for the first time ever, in any language—a collection of five plays that Strindberg wrote specifically for a black box theatre. In 2013, Campo Santo will premiere “Alleluia or The Road,” a new play by Luis Alfaro which is inspired by Strindberg’s “The Great Highway.” Alfaro’s play, which follows the journey of an ex-child preacher, shares both Strindberg’s otherworldly aesthetic and his interest in the unseen and supernatural. Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program is also mounting a professional production of “Miss Julie” on October 15 and 16, which will be accompanied by talkbacks with Bjorn Meidal, a key authority on Strindberg, and Myra Strober, the founding director of the Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Speaking of “Miss Julie,” what about the allegations of misogyny? In her excellent new biography of the author, Sue Prideau discusses in detail how Strindberg attacked what he called “the silken thread by which women are enslaved”; he also wrote a manifesto that demanded that women be afforded the rights “which, thanks to our perverse social system, she has been deprived.” Among these, Prideau notes, are a woman’s right to have control over her body, the right to vote, and the right to equal employment and education.

Maybe August Strindberg will never reemerge on our local and national stages with the same popularity we reserve for his dramatic contemporaries or his followers. It’s quite possible on the 101st anniversary of his death, no one will take note. For the moment, though, those in the Bay Area eagerly seeking to bring his writing back into view should be comforted by Strindberg’s own words of optimism: “I have made an attempt. If it prove a failure, there is plenty of time to try over again.”


Bennett Fisher is a playwright, director, actor and dramaturg. He lives in San Francisco.


A Strindberg Reading List, by Bennett Fisher:

So what Strindberg plays should you try to read or see? Well, here are my top ten, in no particular order.

1. “The Ghost Sonata”—Arguably the first absurdist play, a haunting and insightful investigation of hypocrisy and illusion.

2. “The Great Highway”—Strindberg’s final play, and a beautiful meditation on the end of life.

3. “A Dream Play”—The name says it all. Surreal, unexpected, and breathtakingly lyrical.

4. “The Dance of Death”—More than 60 years before “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Strindberg proves he’s the master of “get the guests.”

5. “Miss Julie”—Strindberg’s most celebrated piece of naturalism, an engrossing battle of sex and social class.

6. “Burned House”—An unexpectedly funny and satirical play from a man misremembered as dour and humorless.

7. “To Damascus” (I, II, and III)—Three epic plays chronicling a magnificent journey of self revelation.

8. “The Keys to Heaven”—Very difficult to find in publication, but worth the search. Simply put, the most imaginative play I have ever read.