April
26, 2002
German
Theaterfest Set for May 2
The Department of
German Studies at MHC is busy setting the stage for the twenty-fifth
annual German Theatre Festival and Competition (Deutsches Theaterfest),
which will take place in Chapin Auditorium May 2 from 9 am to
5 pm and feature students of German at levels spanning elementary
school through college. Seventeen schools from the New England
and mid-Atlantic states will participate in the festival. Groups
will perform (in German) short dramatic scenes that will be judged
by a panel of secondary school German teachers, German and theatre
arts professors, and representatives of the festival's sponsors:
the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Boston
and the Goethe Institute Inter Nationes. Prizes will be awarded
at the middle school, secondary, and college levels.
"Festivals like
this help students realize that learning a foreign language is
not about memorizing a series of charts and tables. When students
perform foreign-language plays, they come to understand that knowing
a foreign language not only allows them to communicate with people
from other countries, but also helps them better understand and
appreciate other cultures," said the event's organizer Donna
Van Handle, senior lecturer and chair of the Department of German
Studies and president of the American Association of Teachers
of German.
Van Handle calls the
Deutsches Theaterfest the only festival of its kind in the Northeast,
noting that the competition drew attention from as far as Indiana
this year. Jennifer Bjornstad, assistant professor of German at
Valparaiso University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
will observe and serve as a judge at MHC's event. She and others
are hoping to organize a similar festival in the Midwest.
Joining Bjornstad
on the fifteen-member jury will be Vanessa James, MHC associate
professor of theatre arts; Donald Sanders, visiting assistant
professor of theatre arts; Jean Dixon, manager of the Language
Resource Center and Frances Perkins Scholar majoring in theatre
arts; and Herbert Lederer, Professor Emeritus of German at the
University of Connecticut, who founded the competition in 1978
and hosted it until his retirement in 1988.
Performances will
include adaptations of fairy tales, such as Rumpelstilzchen and
Rotkäppchen, original plays, adaptations of novellas and
novels by Franz Kafka and Hermann Hesse, and excerpts of plays
by Bertolt Brecht and others. MHC students will present Die Unwürdige
Mutter (The Unworthy Mother), an original one-act play written
as part of their work for the speaking-intensive German course,
Creation and Production of a German Play. After their performance,
MHC students will support fellow participants by serving as stagehands,
stage managers, lighting technicians, greeters, and prop coordinators.
As the Germans say, Hals- und Beinbruch (break a leg)!
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