When was the first performance of one of Max Rudolf Frisch's plays?
Max Frisch
Frisch was already a regular visitor at the Zürich Playhouse (Schauspielhaus) while still a student. Drama in Zürich was experiencing a golden age at this time, thanks to the flood of theatrical talent in exile from Germany and Austria. From 1944 the Playhouse director Kurt Hirschfeld encouraged Frisch to work for the theatre, and backed him when he did so. In Santa Cruz, his first play, written in 1944 and first performed in 1946, Frisch, who had himself been married since 1942, addressed the question of how the dreams and yearnings of the individual could be reconciled with married life. In his 1944 novel J'adore ce qui me brûle (I adore that which burns me) he had already placed emphasis on the incompatibility between the artistic life and respectable middle class existence. The novel reintroduces as its protagonist the artist Jürg Reinhart, familiar to readers of Frisch's first novel, and in many respects a representation of the author himself. It deals with a love affair that ends badly. This same tension is at the centre of a subsequent narrative by Frisch published, initially, by Atlantis in 1945 and titled Bin oder Die Reise nach Peking (Bin or the Journey to Beijing).
Kurt Hirschfeld
Hirschfeld was one of the discoverers and early supporters of the Swiss playwrights Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. He had a special interest in the dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht. Thanks to his personal friendship with Brecht, he was responsible for three premieres of Brecht's work during World War II.