About the work
Botho Strauß's „The Park" („Der Park") was premiered in Freiburg in 1984. Inspired by Shakespeare's „A Midsummer Night's Dream", Strauß has the gods Oberon and Titania descend into a present-day city park to restore eros and myth to disenchanted humanity — and fail against the banality of the present. The play is a polyphonic collage about the loss of the mythical.
Plot
The fairy rulers Oberon and Titania leave their realm and mingle, half visible, among the visitors of a contemporary city park. Their aim: to breathe passion, enchantment and creative power back into the cooled, calculated relationships of modern people. But contact with the disenchanted world turns against them: instead of transforming the humans, the gods themselves are infected and dragged down by the triviality, venality and lovelessness of the present. In loosely connected scenes lovers, artists and outsiders cross paths; transformations, desire and disappointment alternate. The mythical attempt ends in exhaustion — the „park" becomes the stage of a present that has no more room for magic.
Cultural significance
„The Park" is regarded as one of Botho Strauß's most ambitious plays and a significant contribution to German-language drama of the 1980s. The superimposition of Shakespearean mythology and West German present made the work a much-staged and much-discussed key text about eros, art and the loss of meaning.