Translating Affect: David Bowie’s Lazarus in German

Abstract

A little over a month before his death on January 10, 2016, David Bowie had the pleasure of attending the New York première of Lazarus, his first musi­cal. Co-written with Irish playwright Enda Walsh, Lazarus follows the fate of Thomas Newton, the character Bowie played in his first film, The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976, dir. Nicholas Roeg), which was based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel. That story follows the misadventures of an alien who comes to earth in search of water for his dying planet, uses his advanced technology to amass the necessary wealth to ship water back to his planet, but in the pro­cess falls victim to corporate intrigue and his own weaknesses and, as he attempts to flee on his spaceship, is outed as an alien and ends up an incarcer­ated alcoholic.