The Carlo-Schmid-School as a guest at the wannseeFORUM, December 7-12, 2015: a review
"At night..." ...all cats are gray...strange things happen...we are different than during the day...it's the best time to be scared... However you might continue this opening line: The theme of "night" occupies us all throughout our lives, and especially during the dark season. In this year's artistic workshop seminar with middle school students from the Carlo-Schmid-School, which took place from December 7th to 12th at the wannseeFORUM, the participants explored a wide variety of aspects of the phenomenon of night in three different workshops. The results of this sometimes strenuous and nerve-wracking artistic work were presented at the end of the seminar in a public and gratifyingly well-attended final presentation.
In the "Music" workshop (led by Leslie-Ann Boamah), the young people produced, among other things, their own live radio play, entitled "The Legend of the Wannsee Forum," which retold the dramatic events of a Christmas Eve in 1888 and underscored them with sounds and noises. The villa by the lake was also the subject of the jointly composed song "At Night in the Dark," which not only gave the young musicians a persistent earworm.
The participants of the "Physical Theatre" workshop (led by Marc Mascheck) explored a literary source: E.T.A. Hoffmann's famous tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King," which, thanks in no small part to Tchaikovsky's ballet music, is considered by many to be an essential part of the (pre-)Christmas season. The resulting play began in a decidedly Christmassy manner, with tree decorating, gift-wrapping, and feasting – before the mysterious nighttime events surrounding the fierce battle between the mouse army and toy soldiers unfolded on stage.
Was it all just a dream? This was the question that "Emily," a protagonist in the performance created in the "Dance" workshop group (led by Sven Seeger), ultimately had to ask herself. A collection of bizarre nocturnal scenes and figures gathered on stage: dancing crabs, a world-famous cat-and-mouse pair, waltzes, and female boxers – and a story about baby hedgehogs that, unfortunately, no one wanted to hear.
After this intensive week of seminars, the young participants are expected to see the night, as well as the stories and figures it brings forth, with different eyes. We can already look forward to the future artistic explorations of these young people: The seminar format is part of the long-standing cooperation between wannseeFORUM and the Carlo-Schmid-School and will continue in 2016.
Seminar impressions on Flickr:
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