Fairy Tales by Robert Walser

Fairy Tales by Robert Walser

Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956). Snow White forgives the evil queen for trying to kill her. Cinderella doubts her prince and enjoys being hated by her evil stepsisters; the Fairy Tale itself is a character who encourages her to stay within the confines of the story. Sleeping Beauty, the royal family, and its retainers are not happy about being woken from their sleep by an absurd, unpretentious Stranger.

Narrated in Walser’s inimitable, playful language, the theatrical pieces overturn traditional notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into metatheater, even metareflections.

Dramaproject under the guidance of: Simon De Winne, Hans Mortelmans & Timeau De Keyser

From and with: Toon Acke, Sjoerd Koolma, Joshua Smits, Sophie Anna Veelenturf, Maria Zandvliet, Renée Leerman, Fiene Zasada, Lander Slootmaeckers & Senne Paulussen

Text: Robert Walser

(English) translation: Daniele Pantano & James Reidel

Image: Erik Carter

Many thanks to: Daniele Pantano, James Reidel & Reto Sorg

Are the fictions not dreams, and isn’t the open stage nothing other than its wide-open mouth talking in its sleep?

- Robert Walser

Snow White is one of the most profound creations and one that is enough on its own to explain why the most playful of all writers was a favorite author of the merciless Franz Kafka. Walser starts where the fairy tales stop. ‘And if they are not dead, they live now.’ Walser shows how they live.

- Walter Benjamin

A Paul Klee in prose, a good-humored, sweet Beckett, Walser is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer. In Walser’s fictions one is always inside a head, but this universe – and this despair – is anything but solipsistic. It is charged with compassion: awareness of the creatureliness of life, of the fellowship of sadness.

- Susan Sontag

Language: English