The new issue of eMAG is out! Grab your copy in front of the Alte Cafete from July 8 (while supplies last).
Don’t pee in key moments…
… but be fascinated by the AnglistenTheater
The AnglistenTheater is a student society that meets once a week to rehearse an English play. This semester’s production is The River by Jez Butterworth.
I got the chance of attending the premiere to keep you posted on how it was and if it is worth seeing!
So let me talk about the content first: the main character is a man who loves fishing and who owns a hut alongside a river. He invites his girlfriend to come; not only to have a little holiday but mostly because he wants her to learn how to fish. And there is one kind of fish that caught his interest in particular – the sea trout that is particularly hard to catch. But it doesn’t stay there for there is not only one woman but here comes the twist, a second one and lastly, who do the earrings in the bathroom belong to?
The 90-minute play takes place in just the one room of the hut so don’t expect crazy changes of scenery. This means that the performance of the actors in their dialogs becomes even more important to impress the audience. And there are only four actors involved and only two on stage at the same time during the whole play. This sets the expectations high. However, I can assure you I was not disappointed. While the dialogs and indirect speech in the same are a very important part of the plot, the actors did an incredibly good job in performing their roles.
The Man, played by Kujtim Avdija, has practically 100 percent stage time and a few quite long monologues which he mastered with ease. Kujtim plays his role expressively.
The Woman, who is played by Mirjam Kraft, has a beautiful voice, which welcomes the audience to the play by singing a part of William Butler Yeats’s “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” The longer the play the more freely she fulfilled her role and shone especially in the humorous dialogues.
Sarah Dengel, who played the other Woman, also has a beautiful singing voice and could easily add depth and a dramatic touch to her character, which I enjoyed a lot. She delivered a brilliant performance when it came to the confronting scene between the man and the other woman.
While it was the first main role for all three of them the majority already had acting experience, which isn’t a requirement to join the group. Also, a very supportive spirit from the whole AnglistenTheater Team could be felt, as a play consists of more than just the actors, but also of the staff behind the scenes.
Even though I enjoyed learning a lot about fish and sea trout; the hidden depth of the play really lies in the dialogues that, behind all the fishing, tell the story of a lonely man who tries to find consistent love. Finally, I can only congratulate the AnglistenTheater and director Rudolf Beck for a marvelous opening night.
eMAG #43
eMAG #42
REVIEW: The Trojan Women – an Adaptation of Euripides’ Trōiades
by Johanna Back
This is the title of the play under which the AnglistenTheater performs their newest production on Thursday 29th June, Friday 30th June, Tuesday 4th July, Thirsday 6th July. You can attend this capturing drama in Hörsaal II, starting at 7:30 pm each day. The performance lasts for about 60 minutes and stars capturing emotions, intense and musically accompanied dialogs, as well as a perspective on the loss of women after wars.
The Trojan Women
The Trojan War is over, many Trojan men have died, leaving wives without husbands, sisters without brothers, and mothers without sons. Amongst these women is their queen Hecuba, wife to the king Priamos, leading a group of women and children taken to the shores of the Aegean Sea, awaiting their fate to be traded off as the trophies of the victorious Greeks.
Gradually, Helena, the seeress Cassandra, and finally Andromache, Hector’s wife, arrive on the beach with his young son Astyanax in the circle of women, while in the background the conquered city completely burns down and gets destroyed by the soaring flames.
A Little Bit of Background on the Drama
The Trojan War was a ten-year long war of the Greeks against the citizens of the city Troy. The was triggered because the Prince of Troy, Paris, kidnapped the Queen of Sparta, called Helen. Her husband’s brother, King Agamemnon, took this kidnapping as an opportunity to attack the city with his army to invade the city and expand the territory of the Mycenean Greeks. At one point the Greeks were on the verge of losing the war because they were low on resources, caused by the longevity of the war and the Greeks not being able to conquer the city. But they then recalled on the plan of building a wooden horse, to get soldiers inside of the city walls. They offered this horse as a gift to the Trojan citizens. This deceit helped the Greeks to the opportunity of intruding the city unnoticed. They then invaded the city at night, murdered a lot of people and set the city on fire to finally destroy it.
This is the situation of when the drama starts. If you want to know how the story continues, you should go and watch the play.
I Watched It and This Is My Own Opinion
To start this off, I have to say that I was impressed by the performance of the actors and actresses. They poured all their heart into the performances and really brought the characters to life. The atmosphere of the drama is capturing from the start, and you can just immerse yourself in the story that’s told because the setting is really intimate since the stage is close to the audience. This intimacy also aids the audience to experience and feel the deep emotions of the characters portrait by the actresses and actors.
As far as language is concerned, I have to say that I did not have a hard time understanding the plot and the conversations on stage. However, the vocabulary used throughout the monologues and dialogues is rather sophisticated, so keep that in mind. But also, don’t be scared of it, because it suits the atmosphere of the drama well.
My favorite scene is towards the end. The scene was so intense, and the actors were so immersed in their characters, that the intense emotions even brought tears to my eyes and almost made me cry. If you want to know which scene in particular I am talking about you should go and see the drama of the Trojan women. I highly recommend it!
eMAG #41
REVIEW: AnglistenTheater – Three Studies in Cruelty
by Adrian Flohé
Under this motto, the AnglistenTheater performs three short dramas on three consecutive days at the very end of November. This month on the 28th, 29th, and the 30th, you can attend 3 fantastic plays right here in the Sensemble theatre in Augsburg. The performance starts at 08:30 pm every day and deals with the topic of intimidation, violence, political repression, and terror within 90 minutes.
Harold Pinter, Mountain Language
The four short scenes of Harold Pinter’s “Mountain Language” are set in an authoritarian country where mountain dwellers are forbidden to use their own language, where prisoners are mistreated and visiting women and mothers are harassed and molested with impunity.
Samuel Beckett, What Where and Catastrophe
In contrast to the realist mode of Pinter’s “Mountain Language”, Beckett’s short one-act plays “What Where” and “Catastrophe” – a play first performed in 1982 and dedicated to the imprisoned Vaclav Havel – are abstract, stylized parables that confront the audience with a world in which the unquestioning dressing down of people is enacted by mercilessly autocratic impresarios.
Bonus
As a neat bonus, some pictures by Baran Abosaeedi, who created the image used on the posters, flyers, and tickets, will be shown in a slide show in the intermission, and you will even be able to meet Baran at the premiere on the 28th of November.
I Watched It and This Is My Opinion
First of all, I was impressed of how compact the Sensemble theatre is because I was used to the dimensions of Munich’s theatre scene. But it wasn’t something that seemed like a bad thing to me at all, it rather flattered the general mood and after an extremely kind reception, the atmosphere invited for some drinks at the bar where people were already chatting to relaxed lounge music.
When the play started I was amazed by how they managed to include certain light effects in order to illustrate a curtain, to set focus of certain spots and to change the general mood of the performance.
I was accompanied by a non-English student and was worried about the level of English spoken at first but it turned out to be pretty understandable and everyday English so that no problems of understanding came up.
In the 20 minute break after roughly 30 minutes of play, a slideshow about impressive pieces of art was shown. These drawings were underlined by texts describing the disturbing situation of what the three studies in cruelty made a subject of discussion. And being able to recap the first act after a fairly short amount of time, makes this a very beginner friendly theatre play in general, they even included some humorous parts without taking the serosity out of the subject.
The last two acts were more abstract but by no means less worth seeing. My personal favourite was the very last act where the actors even broke the 3rd dimension and made auditorium their stage.
All in all, it has been a very worthwhile experience for me and my partner and she even called it a piece that finally brings up the important issues, similar as we already know it from popular celebrities such as Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf and their recent actions.
So, Make Sure Not to Miss Your Chance
And if you did, no worries, there will be an intensive rehearsal week between March 26 and March 31/April 1 in 2023 in Sion, Switzerland. Or maybe you’re even interested in joining the team and performing yourself, in this case make sure to keep the 17th of January free and attend their general meeting right at our university.