The Deputy
Abstract
The Deputy is a play written by Rolf Hochhuth. Hochhuth was a German editor-turned-playwright who grew up as a Nazi youth. Something that we must understand is that to the Nazi youth of the 1930s and ‘40s, their own activities were viewed by them much the way we view our Boy and Girl Scout activities. They were looking out from the inside of a system that the rest of the world was looking in at and despising. As an adult in the 1950s Hochhuth began to question what had happened in the Third Reich and why. After extensive research he came to the personal conclusion that if there had been any one individual who could have stood up and brought the attention of the world to the rescue of all the people to whom Hitler had brought so much death and destruction it would have been the Pope: Pope Pius XII. Hochhuth then asked himself why Pius chose the course of action—and inaction—that he did. The ultimate result of this research was The Deputy, Hochhuth’s first and longest play, published and first produced in 1963. A live theatrical production of the entire original script as written would be seven to eight hours in length. Although it has been produced dozens of times, there is no record of the entire play ever having been staged.
Hochhuth wrote The Deputy in German. There are both English and American translations. The 1964 New York Broadway production is an adaptation by Jerome Rothenberg of the American translation by Richard and Clara Winston (Simon publicity pack S – 486, 3). In the fall of 1994, The Missouri Repertory Theatre, at the direction of George Keathley, staged a production of its own adaptation from the same American translation. The differences between these two adaptations are many. This is the focus of my thesis. I do not wish to argue or reargue the points of the play or those of its critics, but rather to simply look at which adaptation of the American translation is more theatrically vital and feasible to present to a modern American audience.
Table of Contents
Preface -- Chapter one -- Chapter two -- Chapter three -- Chapter four -- Appendix A. Text of The Deputy (MRT 1994) -- Appendix B. Article by author (INFOZINE1994)
Degree
M.A. (Master of Arts)