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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

It's got a certain transparency about it, because if the clothes weren't so fashionable, so slick, there would be no transparency at all. Often women hide behind a glossy exterior of fashion and there's more to people than this superficiality.
Penny Bainbridge, Producer,
​The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
17-28 May, 1988, Free Theatre, The Arts Centre
* We would love to find photos of this production, please get in touch if you have any [email protected]
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the famous German filmmaker was also a theatre director and playwright. He wrote The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant as a play and later made a film of it.

Petra von Kant is a fashion designer who also wants to redesign her life on aesthetic principles. As her experience with marriage and the male world is ugly and devastating she turns to Lesbian love only to find that beauty and love have to be paid for as much as success and financial independence.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant fluctuates from soap opera and melodrama to radical criticism of patriarchal society and the male principle. The play is caught in a mixture of Kitsch and Art, as Petra is caught between the desire for love and beauty and the exploitation of her sisters.

The production sets the play in New Zealand, a New Zealand that is more a tatty capitalist dream than reality.

Petra von Kant's dresses will be modelled in a fashion show and are on sale in the interval and at the end of the play.

This is the first production coming out of a cooperation of the Free Theatre with the newly established University Drama Programme.

Reviews

The Theatrical equivalent of easy-listening music, perhaps.... A production engaging as a pageant, but still lacking. Like an Easter egg; tasty but hollow under the lovely tinfoil. A steady diet of it would be unhealthy. 
​
Production a stunner
Michael Dickison, The Star
... mostly it sags and lags.... points are bludgeoned home and the effect is largely soporific.

Petra's bitter tears
Mike O'Brien, The Press, 25 May 1988
...the tedium of these proceedings is not redeemed.... Fassbinder's decadent Western European sensibility just doesn't wash in deepest Fendalton.... self-contradictory, repititious nonsense.... an interpretation which works against the play.... not credible at all.... dilettantism with pretensions, over-priced and under-done.
​
​The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
S.W.H. Taylor, CANTA Vol. 58 No. 10, 30 May 1988

Articles

Dramatic Students
Margaret McLachlan, CANTA Vol. 58 No. 10, 30 May 1988

The bitter tears of Petra von Kant
​publication unspecified
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Any life story that deals with a relationship or whatever is a melodrama and, for this reason, I think melodrama films are correct films. The American method of making them, however, left the audience with emotions and nothing else. I want to give the spectator the emotions along with the possibility of reflecting on and analysing what he is feeling. With Brecht you see the emotions and you reflect upon them as you witness them but you never feel them. That's my interpretation and I think I go farther that he did in that I let the audience feel and think.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977
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  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • A brief history...
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • Who We Are
    • The University Connection
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
  • WHATS ON
    • The Passionate Puritan
  • EDUCATION
    • Kids Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • PRODUCTIONS 1979 - present
    • The Cat Eleonore
    • The Deadbeat Opera
    • Babylon Berlin
    • Beggars Banquet
    • Woyzeck
    • The Axe
    • Endgame
    • Digitising Performance
    • Erewhon: Over the Range
    • A Summer Night's Dream
    • How Dare You
    • A Winter's Tale
    • Ars Acustica
    • Alice
    • The Black Rider
    • Frankenstein
    • The Mauricio Kagel Project
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • Kafka's Amerika
    • Ubu Nights >
      • Past Ubu Nights >
        • Ma Ubu Night
        • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
        • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
        • Frankenstein Ubu Night
        • Casablanca Ubu Night
        • Faust Ubu Night
        • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
        • Punk Ubu Night
        • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
        • Crossroads Ubu Night
        • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
        • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
        • Bowie Ubu Night
        • Warhol Ubu Night
        • Berlin Kabarette
        • Beat Ubu Night
        • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
        • David Lynch Ubu Night
        • Kafka Ubu Night
        • Tango Ubu Night
        • Ubu Ubu Night
        • Lovecraft Ubu Night
    • Canterbury Tales
    • The Soldier's Tale
    • Bluebeard's Castle >
      • Bluebeard's Castle credits
    • I Sing the Body Electric
    • Big Heads Protest
    • Hereafter
    • Passion, Pulse and Power
    • The Earthquake in Chile
    • Don Giovanni Invites you to Dinner
    • Doctor Faustus
    • The Marvellous Corricks >
      • Corricks - Credits
    • Distraction Camp
    • Remake
    • Ella and Susn
    • There and Back Again
    • Faust Chroma
    • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
    • Change Proposal
    • Faust Feast
    • Diana Down Under
    • Philoctetes >
      • Production Credits - Piloctetes
    • Fantasia
    • Christmas Shopping
    • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
    • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
    • Caucasian Chalk Circle
    • Samson Airline
    • Antigone
    • Kabarett Kabul
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • The Well Intentioned Wife
    • The Last Days of Mankind
    • Bakkhai / Diotek
    • Krapp's Last Tape
    • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
    • Comrade Savage
    • Love on a Bicycle
    • Crusoe: A Lapsarian Mass in Twelve Movements
    • Medea
    • Songs to the Judges
    • Resolution Island
    • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
    • The Empire Builders
    • States of Shock
    • Robinson Crusoe or: I That Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
    • Power
    • MedeaMaterial
    • Salome
    • Electra
    • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
    • Hamletmachine
    • Oresteia
    • A Respectable Wedding
    • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    • Cloudkiwiland
    • Double Act / Postponeless >
      • double act credits
    • Preversions
    • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
    • Red Cross & Takeaway
    • Lulu
    • Cowboy Mouth
    • The Meeting >
      • the meeting credits
    • Action / Tongues
    • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
    • A Letter from L
    • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
    • Free Theatre Christmas Show
    • The Ride Across Lake Constance
    • Electra
    • In Three Minds
    • The Rapist Over Suzannah
    • 1984: The Future Is Now
    • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
    • Leonce and Lena
    • Court Case: Free Theatre vs The Arts Centre
    • The Almost Free Theatre Kabernette
    • The Joffongract
    • King Lear
    • Kabarett
    • King Ubu
    • Black Cat Cabaret
    • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
    • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
    • Round Dance
    • Woyzeck
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • SUPPORT
  • CONTACT
  • CNZ application