In December 2009 Pam and I went to watch a French play at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, the city’s theatre. It was a stage adaption of “The Little Prince”. Funnily enough, the play was arranged by the American Drama Group in Europe. Usually their plays are in the English language.
Anyway, in February the American Drama Group will return to the Schauspielhaus Bochum with Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet“. The stage play will be shown on February 2nd and 3rd, 2010. We’ve got tickets for Wednesday 3rd.
The last play in English language we saw was Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Considering the experience of the French play, I think I know the concept of the stage setting. The stage settings are minimalistic but arranged very cleverly. I lack the words and language to describe this further. The concept of the stage settings seems to support easy traveling and compatibility to different and even very small stages.
We are looking forward to another interesting and entertaining evening.
At least “European Capital of Culture” indicates that the city granted the title offers a lot of English language activities. Pam and I just have been to Linz, European Capital of Culture 2009. In my opinion Linz’09 seems to focus three things: sound, light and electronics.
Some of the offers of Linz don’t need language at all, e.g. the daily organ concerts at different churches. For a lot of the museums, there are offers of weekly English public guided tours. We went to the ‘Landesgalerie Linz’. The nice thing was that the guided tour just was for the two of us. We were told that this is not always the case. But I also heard about Austrian groups booking English tours. We also had an English language tour through the Ars Electronica Center. It could only cover party of it. Therefore, we returned. To get an idea of the Ars Electronica Museum, you may want to watch the following video.
You don’t need a guided tour through the Ars Electronica Center. All installations and descriptions are bilingual – in German and English. When I recall what the highlights of European Capital of Culture Ruhr.2010 will be, I am sure that they will be bilingual, too. Just have a look at the route of industrial heritage: the signs are all bilingual. I hope there will be more. I am sure there will be.
Ruhr.2010 will bring a lot of English language offer to our Region – the metropolis Ruhr. European Capital of Culture are always a good place to expect English language offers.
We also watched a show – “Clownerie” – which contained music but no language.
FIDENA – “Puppet Theatre of Nations” ist the title of an institute and a festival for international puppeteering in Bochum (Ruhr). This years festival takes place from August 29th to September 4th. There will be four different plays, some premieres and a play in English Llnguage. Anyway, you can visit nearly any of the plays because most of them don’t need any language. As an exception to the rule, one play affords knowledge of English language. It’s »Punch and Judy in Afghanistan – When East meets West, who will be laughing in the End?«
“Punch and Judy” are brother and sister to the German “Kasper und Grete” (Kasperletheater). This is connected to the headline of FIDENA in 2009: “Kasper reloaded” meaning “‘Punch and Judy’ reloaded”. This “Punch and Judy” will be performed by the Australian actor and puppeteer Neville Tranter who runs The Stuffed Puppet Theatre in the Netherlands. Well, I don’t want to summarize other pages, even if there seems to be only a German article on Wikipedia. On youTube, there are two videos from two different shows. One was part of the Ruhr Trienale. Here is the other video. It helps to understand what you will expect when you are thinking about visiting the shows on September 1st to 3rd. We already ordered tickets.
Neville Tranter and The Stuffed Puppet produce this Punch and Judy for the European Capital of Culture Linz’09. There will be a festival in November. The German premiere (not language but state of first show) will be in September in Bochum (European Capital of Culture 2010). We are going to spend a few days in Linz to learn about the Cultural Capital Project.
“Practise English with Theatre” is the motto of this company in Essen. They use the stage of Stratmann’s Theater on Kennedyplatz in Essen. Due to the company’s webpage, they are going to play more in schools. The plays are somewhat adapted to be easily understandable by pupils. You can order textbooks of the modified play from the company.
Looks to me, that they aim on the audience to prepare the play at home before watching it on the stage. Due to the use of ‘theatre’ in URL and name, I guess they focus British Englisch-
Next winter they want to start with “Romeo and Juliet” again.
Via the website of the British German Club in Duisburg, I found a hint to an English theater group at the university of Duisburg. The university is now the university of Duisburg and Essen after they joined. The group is already nearly 30 years old and consists of students and aluminis. It calls itstelf the “Duisburg University Englsih Thespians”
From July 2nd to 11th there will be a “Very British” Festival at the shopping mall of ‘Mülheim an der Ruhr‘, not far form the city limits of the city of Essen. The mall is called ‘Rhein-Ruhr-Zentrum‘. There will be several events. I assume that most of them will take place on a stage, i.e.
There is a printed program which is also available as a PDF document here.
As I recognized at the Schauspielhaus Bochum yesterday, when we watched ‘A Tribute to Johnny Cash’ (see yesterday’s entry in this blog), there will be a theater festival soon which also includes some English plays. With different words: There will be three English plays at the Schauspielhaus soon.
From June 19th to July 1st the K15 festival will be host to some one productions of the Schauspielhaus crew but also for guests from other countries. The internet page of the K15 K15 festival doesn’t say which plays will be in English language. Maybe I just couldn’t find it? Anyway, I have got a program book of the festival. Here are the shows which are marked being in English language:
Tonight we have been to a show at the Kammerspiel Bochum, one of the three stages of the Schauspielshaus (theater) Bochum. We watched ‘A Tribute to Johnny Cash’. It’s a concert with little texts between the songs about Johnny Cash’s life. The songs are all in English but the texts and little play are in German. To follow the whole thing it’s better to know at least a little bit of the other language. I mean, if you are German native speaker you should understand what the songs are about or might have listend to some Cash songs and their lyrics. The other way around, being a native speaker of English you should understand a few words to understand what they are talking about and what connects the songs. Alternatively it might be helpful to know about Johnny Cash and his life before you go. Than you should also understand the little play.
We enjoyed the show very much. It was hard to get tickets even if the show is on the program again for a long time. Last year it was at the Zeltfestival Ruhr. This year I already have ticket for ‘A Tribute to Quentin Tarantion’. The concept of this show should be similar. For the tickets tonight, we only paid €8,80 per person, for Tarantion at Zeltfestival it was about €25,–. There are different ticket at different prices.
What to do with an English native speaker? Theater plays can be difficult to understand, especially German classic theater. How much worse is it, if you’re not a native speaker. How much worse is it, if there is a lot of elaborated language that’s not similiar to everyday language? Then, you’ll try to look for play in English language.
Married to a native speaker who is learning German limits you to some activities. TV? DVDs with subtitles, original (mainly English) soundtracks und dubbing are a good substitute. Cinema? Sometimes there are original movies with subtitles (OmU – Original mit Untertitel). Music? ok. Theater plays? Ballet, well ….. English.
Therefore I always have a look at the monthly schedule of the Schauspielhaus Bochum. Sometimes there is something in English, like a ‘revival’ of Johnny Cash. And even now in November, there will a guest performance by the American Drama Group in Europe. They’ll perform William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A difficult, classical English play. Famous but hard. I think I should order the booklet for it before I’ll go there on November 7th.
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