Frank Wedekind’s play Pandora’s Box was first performed in 1904.
Pandora’s Box is the second of Wedekind’s two Lulu plays, following Earth Spirit. It premiered in 1904 and continues the story of Lulu, a figure whose relationships expose conflicts involving sexuality, class, respectability, and control.
The play was controversial and was initially subject to censorship and restrictions. Wedekind’s drama confronted social conventions directly, and its frank treatment of desire contributed to its difficult reception. Its theatrical history is part of the reason Lulu became such a durable figure in European modernist culture.
The title is also shared by Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1929 film, which adapts both Pandora’s Box and Earth Spirit. The dates are therefore easy to mix up: Earth Spirit began in 1895, Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box was first performed in 1904, and Pabst’s film appeared in 1929.