Our school has a partnership with Schloss Hamborn Steiner school in Germany. Our class nine goes to Schloss Hamborn to work at their farm for two weeks, and as an exchange, they come to our school to perform a Shakespeare play.
Our retired drama teacher stayed there in Hamborn to work on the play for six weeks, directing the play and working on their English language.
Yes, it is a Shakespeare play, so it is spoken in classic English, of course.
I imagine it would be quite difficult for the actors to play Shakespeare in English. But imagine how much pressure they had to overcome to play it in England in front of English audience.
This year their German accent was stronger and often the speech was hard to understand. The teachers deliberately choose students with lower English ability for the bigger parts in the play. That was one of the pedagogical challenges the teachers set for the pupils.
Except for the language problem, their show itself was brilliant, fantastic and terrific!!! It was very "German" play which has modern + abstract artistic effects, using a projector showing some photos and designs on the screen as a part of their set. Their music was also taking a great part of the play. The music teacher at Schloss Hamborn is a modern composer, and composed whole music for the play. They loaded their whole set of musical instruments, such as big drum, strings, winds, and organ (!) into their coach to travel from Germany to England.
Another great aspect of the play was their dance. They have dance lessons at school, and dance also had a big effect in the play. It was a modern dance by about 7 to 8 female pupils and one male pupil. The male dancer must be a trained and gifted dancer. His body moved so smoothly as if he doesn't have any joints.... All his movements were performed without stretch for him at all, but bringing good tension to the audience... When he was on the stage, his existence just occupied whole theatre.
Wow...... I just sighed with the quality they created. They are just class ten kids. They are only 15, 16 years old normal kids. And I don't think this class was very "good" class normaly, and I could see that the teachers had struggled to bring them to the higher completion on this play. But in the end, they did it. Again I must say the play was brilliant!!!
Thanks for coming, and bringing their achievement to England.
And of course I want to applause to their courage to play Shakespeare in English in England to English audience!!!
Well done!!
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2 comments:
As you say, it must be challenging for German students to act in English...but the play sounds really interesting!
And 'The Tempest' is personally my most favourite story of Shakespeare's.
Every summer there is the Shakespeare festival in Cambridge and we can see many of plays in college gardens.
I haven't seen any of them, but I would love to see them next year.
I think we are lucky to have an opportunity to see these classic plays in English, with British people and people from many different countries:)
hello, anima,
It was really really fantastic play. I wish more people could see the play.
Yes, we are so lucky to have many opportunities to see shakespeare's play, of course including RSC. England is such a nice country with rich old cultures.
I didn't know about the Shakespeare festival in Cambridge. When I visited Cambridge this summer, we instantly fell in love with the city. Shakespeare play in Cambridge must be such an interesting show!! I would love to visit the festival next year!!
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