Sports Play

With translation assistance and a foreword by Karen Juers-Munby

First produced in 1998 at the famous Vienna Burgtheater, the remarkable and provocative Sports Play by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek is a postdramatic theatrical exploration of the making, marketing and sale of the human body and of emotions in sport. It explores contemporary society's obsession with fitness and body culture bringing into sharp focus our need to belong to a group, a team or a nation. Sport is seen as a form of war in peacetime.


About the Author
Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 as well as the Georg Büchner Prize in 1998; the Mülheim Dramatists Prize in 2002 and 2004; the Franz Kafka Prize in 2004. Jelinek's work is multi-faceted and highly controversial. Her plays often emphasize choreography. Some consider her plays taciturn, others lavish, and others still a new form of theatre altogether. Jelinek's novel, Die Klavierspielerin was filmed as The Piano Teacher by Austrian director Michael Haneke, with French actress Isabelle Huppert as the protagonist.