Amputation:
Texts for an Extraordinary Spectacle

Partial Table of Contents

Two versions of the play, translated by Solrun Hoaas:

Amputation (final version, 1970)

with program notes and photographs from the 1977 production in Canberra, Australia

"The Amputation", (early version, 1964)

with drawings by the author (right: Dr. Vivaldi)

Supplementary essays:

Jens Bjørneboe, The Theater Tomorrow

Oddbjørn Johannessen, Jens Bjørneboe and the Norwegian Theatre

Esther Greenleaf Mürer, "Mad Scientists and Moral Outrage: The Genesis of JB's Amputation"

Letters from Bjørneboe to Martha Vestin, director of the original 1970 production in Stockholm

From the back cover:

The Norwegian iconoclast Jens Bjørneboe described this work as "a wild, almost surrealistic play—partly sinister, partly comic ... directed against those forms of society that do not allow room for people who think differently from those in power." In the horrible world of Amputation the dissident indivudal who cannot be normalized by conditioned reflexes may yet serve society—in the medical sense.

Bjørneboe wrote two versions of the play. Here, in one volume, are both, plus supplemental texts that provide all the materials for an extraordinary reading and, for the avant- garde theatrical group, an extraordinary production of Bjørneboe's shocking and prophetic warning.

Excerpt

Related pages

Related Pages:

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Bibliography of literature about Amputation

Related topics in Theme Index:

Heretics and Outsiders

Medicine and Science

Theater

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This page updated February 2003