Which playwright wrote the 1904 drama Pandora’s Box about Lulu?

Frank Wedekind wrote the 1904 drama Pandora’s Box about Lulu.

Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box is the second of two linked plays about Lulu, following Earth Spirit. The plays present Lulu as a sexually independent and socially disruptive figure whose relationships expose hypocrisy, power, and the constraints imposed on women. The work’s frank treatment of sexuality and its challenge to conventional morality made it controversial in the German theater of its period.

The play was written in German as Die Büchse der Pandora. Its title echoes the Greek myth, but Lulu is not Pandora from Hesiod’s story. Wedekind uses the mythic name as a symbolic frame for a modern drama about desire and social fear. The character later became famous through stage productions and film adaptations.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1929 film Pandora’s Box is the best-known screen adaptation, with Louise Brooks playing Lulu. Wedekind’s plays also influenced later opera and theater works. Because the title is shared by many films, albums, and books, identifying Wedekind and Lulu distinguishes this early twentieth-century drama from unrelated uses of the phrase.