About the work
Woody Allen's one-act "God: A Comedy in One Act" was first published in 1975 together with the companion piece "Death" in the collection "Without Feathers"; the German stage version was translated by Peter Stephan Jungk for S. Fischer Theaterverlag. The play is modelled on Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre: characters repeatedly break the stage illusion, swap roles and comment on the play as it unfolds.
Plot
In ancient Athens around 500 BC, a writer and an actor searching for the ending of their play for a drama festival resort to a stage machine as a deus ex machina. In the resulting play-within-a-play, a slave brings the queen an answer to the question of whether God exists — "yes" — after which the action collapses into growing chaos of stage directions and heckling from the audience.
Cultural significance
The satire on theatrical convention and stage illusion has been staged by directors including Roberto Ciulli at Theater an der Ruhr. Together with its companion piece "Death," "God" counts among Allen's early stage works, in which, as later in "Central Park West" and "Riverside Drive," he pursued an interest in absurdist, philosophically tinged theatre distinct from his film work.