The Dance of Death

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish dramatist, writer, poet, essayist, and painter who lived from 22 January 1849 to 14 May 1912. The Red Room (1879), written by him, has usually been referred to be the first modern Swedish book. He is regarded as the "father" of contemporary Swedish writing. With its attempt to portray the unconscious processes by doing away with traditional theatrical time and space, Zola's A Dream Play (1902) had a key influence on both expressionism and surrealism. He assisted in running the Intimate Theatre, which produced his chamber pieces and was fashioned after Max Reinhardt's Kammerspielhaus (such as The Ghost Sonata). He interacted with a wide range of artists from Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia. He focused on Frida Uhl, who was just twenty-three years Strindberg's junior. They tied the knot in 1893. The couple split up less than a year after the birth of their daughter Kerstin, however their marriage was not legally dissolved until 1897. Shortly after one of Strindberg's plays had its American premiere, he passed away. The Father, a translation by Edith Gardener Shearn Oland and her husband Warner Oland, debuted on April 9, 1912, at the Berkeley Theatre in New York.