Variations on Beethoven’s life

Stage director Moises Kaufman didn’t do too badly with his last foray into Germanic subject matter: He directed Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife,” which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for best play with its depiction of the life and times of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who managed to survive both the Nazis and the East German communists while living in Berlin as a cross-dressing, openly gay man.

Now Kaufman and his Tectonic Theatre Project (with whom he created “The Laramie Project”) are developing a show based on an episode from the life of Ludwig van Beethoven. With the working title “Variations on a Theme,” it probes how Beethoven, almost totally deaf, became obsessed with a waltz theme circulated by a music publisher and composed his Diabelli Variations for the piano -- 33 of them -- in response.

Kaufman’s latest is one of seven plays-in-the-making that will be workshopped at next month’s annual Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah. They include new works by Beth Henley and Philip Kan Gotanda, as well as “Macbeth Quintet,” actor Stephen Dillane’s solo version of the Shakespeare play to be accompanied by a jazz quartet, with music by Vinny Golia.