Georg Büchner
Leonce und Lena, Zweiter Akt
In this book I tried to stage the second act of
Büchner’s Leonce und Lena
typographically, in a sense taking literally my idea of the book as a stage. Written (printed) language, standing in for spoken language, is especially interesting when it comes to a play. The book space must become a stage space, and writing must become speech. This brought up questions like: is a large font always perceived as loud speech, or can it also emphasize the particular importance of a quiet passage? Does inclined typography stand for dynamicism, restlessness, confusion? Will the reader/viewer understand it if the talking at cross-purposes in Valerio and Leonce’s dialogue is represented by standing the text “on its head”? In other words, the dialogue can never be read in a continuous way here, but only one part at a time, because the book must be turned upside down to read the other part. The typographical staging is supported by ten original film photos that represent specific people in the play. They are black and white photographs of the type formerly used in advertising by movie theaters. Most of them show more or less famous actors or film scenes. Since they are original, unique pieces, each copy of the edition uses different photos. Criteria for choosing the photos were based on the respective situations in the play. For instance, one time I needed a younger woman and an older one in order to represent Lena and her governess, and another time it needed to be a serious man and a funny one, to represent Leonce and Valerio. It was not important which actors were shown in the photo, as long as they corresponded to the desired type.
84 pages, Fabriano-Bütten Disegno 5, hand-set, letterpress printed, 10 original film photos, half cloth binding , 27 x 38.5 cm, 10 print-numbered and signed copies. Lahnstein 1989. (sold)