Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Female Performers of His Work

This project searches to discover what impact the Hofmannsthal oeuvre had upon the life and work of the female performers (such as Gertrud Eysoldt, Maria Jeritza, Marie Gutheil-Schoder), how they collaborated with the writer and what the analysis of the performance documentation can tell us about the ground-breaking work of the Austrian author and vice versa. The Hofmannsthal work is read as a performative scenario for a cultural change which concerns the redefinition of gender roles. The main hypothesis is that, on one hand, this work was nourished by the way the female performers of the early 20th century redefined the constructions of femininity (both in their life and in their art), and on the other hand, this work produced new frames of how (liberated) femininity was supposed to be understood by the society, that, in spite of all, remained predominantly patriarchal. Performers who are in the focus of this research approached the text of Hofmannsthal as challenges and the way they played the respective parts (and, often, also the way they constructed their on-stage and off-stage images, their subsequent careers and sometimes even their private lives) represented a response to this challenge. This research equally informs the history of the performance, as well as enlightens anew the work of Hofmannsthal as author and theatrical man. Most of all it is informative from the point of view of the collaboration between the different agents of the theatrical process, also in its gendered dimension. Hofmannsthal`s legacy represents a unique case to study the dynamics of relationship between a playwright, a director and a female performer in that very period when the transition between the actor- centred paradigm to the director-centred one took place and the performers gradually were marginalized. Thus, one of the innovative methodological moves of the project is an attempt to gender the perspective on the reform which took place in the European theatre of the late 19th early 20th century and resulted in rearranging the hierarchy between different agents of theatre production. The research is carried out at the intersection of literary studies, theatre studies, gender studies and life writing studies, striving to reconstruct the complex hypertext of culture while questioning the hierarchy of the published literary texts over theatrical performance, autobiographical writings or texts of life (the term adopted from the studies of Russian Silver Age Culture). Extensive archival research is indispensable and the strategies of women`s history and gender-sensitive analysis of autobiographical writings will be applied and developed for the analysis. The literary work inspired by the personalities of the specific actresses will be read to reveal traces of complex negotiations between different agents of the cultural change, with the aim to restore the female performers` agency .

This project wanted to discover what impact the Hofmannsthal oeuvre had upon the life and work of the female performers, how they responded to the challenges of his texts (und vice versa) and what the analysis of the performance documentation can tell us about the ground-breaking work of the Austrian author. The Hofmannsthal work is read as a performative scenario for a cultural change which concerns the redefinition of gender roles. The main hypothesis was that, on one hand, this work was nourished by the way the female performers of the early 20th century redefined the constructions of femininity, and on the other hand, this work produced new frames of how ("liberated") femininity was supposed to be understood by the society, that, in spite of all, remained predominantly patriarchal. The research concentrated on the roles in the Hofmannsthals work performed by the following artists: Gertrud Eysoldt, Susanne Desprès, Stanislawa Wysocka, Tamara Karsavina, Tilla Durieux, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Ami Schwaninger, Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Margit Bokor. This study equally informs the history of the performance, as well as enlightens anew the work of Hofmannsthal as author and theatrical man. Most of all it is informative from the point of view of the collaboration between the different agents of the theatrical process, especially in its gendered dimension. Hofmannsthal's legacy represents a unique case to study the dynamics of relationship between a playwright, a director and a female performer in that very period when the transition between the performer-centred paradigm to the director-centred one took place and the performers gradually were marginalized. Thus, one of the innovative methodological moves of the project is an attempt to gender the perspective on the reform which took place in the European theatre of the former turn-of-the-century and resulted in rearranging the hierarchy between different agents of theatre production and establishing a production model that dominates still today. The research was carried out at the intersection of literary studies, theatre studies, gender studies and life writing studies, striving to reconstruct the complex hypertext of culture while questioning the hierarchy of the published literary texts over theatrical performance, autobiographical writings or "texts of life". One of the most important aspects was gender-sensitive analysis of autobiographical writings of the performers (that also included such archival findings as unpublished letters of Gertrud Eysoldt and diaries of Anna Bahr-Mildenburg). Previously unknown or overlooked theatre reviews belong to another important set of findings. Both Hofmannsthals work and the responses to its stage realization are critically read to reveal traces of complex negotiations between different agents of the cultural change, with the aim to restore the female performers' agency and to claim a legacy that belongs to the genealogy of gender- and diversity-sensitive performers today.