The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other
Written by	Peter Handke
Date of premiere	1992
Original language	German
Setting	A bright, empty town square
This box: view • talk • edit

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other (Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten) is a one act play without words written by Peter Handke. The play has 450 characters and focuses on a day in the life of an unspecified town square.

1 Plot
2 Productions
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

In an interview with Sigrid Löffler for Profil in May 1992, Handke described the idea behind the play:

The trigger for the play was an afternoon several years ago. I'd spent the entire day on a little square in Muggia near Trieste. I sat on the terrace of a café and watched life pass by. I got into a real state of observation, perhaps this was helped along a bit by the wine. Every little thing became significant (without being symbolic). The tiniest procedures seemed significant of the world. After three or four hours a hearse drew up in front of a house, men entered and came out with a coffin, onlookers assembled and the dispersed, the hearse drove away. After that the hustle and bustle continued - the milling of tourists, natives and workers. Those who came after this occurrence didn't know what had gone on before. But for me, who had seen it, everything that happened after the incident with the hearse seemed somewhat coloured by it. None of the people on the square knew anything of each other - hence the title. But we,the onlookers see them as sculptures who sculpt each other through what goes on before and after. Only through what comes after does that which has gone before gain contours; and what went on before sculpts what is to come.^[1]

[edit] Productions

[edit] Original production

The original production was staged in Vienna in 1992.

[edit] British premiere

The play was first performed in the UK at the Edinburgh Festival in 1994.

[edit] 2008 revival

The play was performed in a new translation by Meredith Oakes at the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London. It opened on 13 February 2008 and ran until 12 April^[2]. The play was directed by James Macdonald with Jonathan Burrows as associate director and featured the following ensemble cast: