by Gerhart Hauptmann
Adapted by HENRY LIVINGS from a translation by MARY MORRISON
Produced by ALFRED BRADLEY tSecond broadcast
This year is the centenary of the birth of the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann. In The Weavers, first performed in 1892. he tried to write a play of which the hero is not an individual but a group. It is about the violent attempt of Silesian hand-loom weavers to stop the introduction of mechanical looms. The original is written in Silesian dialect, and it has been adapted into a north country idiom and produced in the BBC's North Region.