Peter Handke’s first produced play, Offending the Audience [original title Publikumsbeschimpfung, also translated as The Audience Abused and as Public Insult], premiered in June, 1966, as part of the inaugural “Experimenta” arts festival in Frankfurt. Initially Handke, who had recently gained a reputation as an experimental novelist with his début novel Die Hornissen [The Hornets, 1966], had a hard time finding a willing and suitable forum to have his theatrical endeavour produced. The prominent publishing house Suhrkamp had published the play, together with two other so-called “Sprechstücke”, but no theatre was apparently interested in mounting it, which makes it one of those very rare occasions where a playscript is published before its first staging. Suhrkamp contacted over 60 theatres in order to get the play produced, before the still small and experimental Frankfurt “Theater am...
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Citation: Defraeye, Piet. "Publikumsbeschimpfung und andere Sprechstücke". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 December 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20936, accessed 14 December 2025.]
