Armin Wiebe

The Sonata of Beethoven Blatz  started as a novel and ended up as a play. The playwright Armin Wiebe told his talk back audience on Tuesday that the play started as a novel and in a creative writing class he wrote a few short scenes for a screenplay exercise including the novel characters. This ultimately led to the creation of a low-German Mennonite play that takes place in southern Manitoba.

The play is entertaining and cleverly written. It's funny and managed to get all of us non-German folk rolling in our seats at some parts. The costumes were typical prairie farm early 19th century costumes that you would expect of them. The dialogue was flitted with low German but like I said earlier it was all easy to understand. There were some scenes that were beyond me and a few people who sat next to me. But other than that very-entertaining. He makes the characters relatable people with faults and worries and problems. But nothing extraordinary which is found in some plays that are completely unable to relate to. Looking at some of Wiebe's  earlier descriptions of his work. View here.

The website shows some excerpts from his book The Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst which has a much different tone. It is however not his famous low-German characters that are speaking which is why it may not be as similar to the play. Interestingly enough he seemed to have another voice yet in Tatsea a book set in the Canadian Subarctic in the 1760's. I say this because of a comment that says, "This book should be in schools, Armin. You write like an Indian." Surely the way Indians sound and Mennonites must be different. And that is where I leave with this thought. That maybe it is possible to phase out the old voices and styles and learn new ones. It's certainly worth a shot.