Today 5pm in Germany...
Thursday, May 8. 2008
The English Dramatic Society of Erlangen's University is performing the play "Twelfth Night" next week. This time they won't only playing at the university's Experimentiertheater, but also at the Clubbühne of the E-Werk. See here for details. I'd be interested in watching this play - anyone reading this want to join? Just drop a comment, or give me a call.
THE PLOT
The twins Viola and Sebastian are separated at sea in a shipwreck. Viola finds herself stranded with her crew on the coast of Illyria. There, dressed as a man, she becomes a servant to Duke Orsino, who is madly in love with the Lady Olivia. She, however, doesn’t want anything to do with the duke.
Again and again the duke sends his messenger to Olivia in an attempt to win her heart. And so it happens that Viola, who in her service to the Duke goes by the name of Cesario, is sent to Lady Olivia’s house. Olivia takes a fancy to the handsome young man Cesario the first time they meet.
In the meantime Viola’s twin brother has arrived in Illyria unknowing that his sister, who he presumed dead, was also staying there. This leads to plenty of confusion and cases of mistaken identity, but how it all ends remains to be seen.
Although already a few days have past I want to use the chance for some explanations about my current header picture. Most of you (unless you are only following my blog via RSS) should have noticed it. It shows the four witches Granny, Nanny, Magrat and Elda. Three of these witches are the main persons in Terry Prattchet’s book “The Wyrds sisters”. I’ve been to Erlangen to see this play performed by the EDS. Terry Pratchett’s book has been adapted for stage by Stephen Briggs, and the director of the EDS Damian Quinn once more managed to stage a vivid and interesting play! Sabine http://www.bee-to-bee.blogspot.com and Flo joined me to visit Erlangen and wrote about there impressions here and here. I also couldn’t resist to take a few “snapshots”. Although the play took about three hours it was worth every minute and I’m looking forward to visit EDS next performance!
Like last semester the English Dramatic Society is performing a quite interesting play. Anyone interested to join me visiting one of the shows?
Dear friends of the EDS,
The World Cup has kept Germany in football fever for the last four weeks and now that it's all over some of you might well be asking yourselves just how you are going to fill those empty evenings. Well, at least for one evening we can offer you an evening of theatrical and musical entertainment with the next EDS production, the stage adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters.
Many of you (and we are sure there will be a few Pratchett fans out there) will have read the book and know the (original) story from the Discworld series - a spinoff of Macbeth - the tale of witch Granny Weatherwax and her fellow coven members who must save the kingdom from the evil Duke. With just a few changes here and there (to make it funnier?) and added musical interludes Wyrd Sisters offers somethings for everyone.
The performance dates are Tuesday - Saturday, 25th - 29th July, at 19.00 each evening, with tickets (EUR 8 and EUR 6) available now to reserve online (on our newly launched website - http://www.english-dramatic-society.de) and to buy from Wednesday (12th July) from our usual points of sale. Please see the website for more details.
We very much look forward to welcoming you to one (or more) of our performances later this month and thank you as ever for your continued support.
Yours,
The English Dramatic Society, Erlangen
Cast and Crew of Wyrd Sisters
This year I made it to the Bergkerwa in Erlangen two times. The first visit was organized by my Feki.de friends. To reach Erlangen we had split into two groups. The first did take a train around 2pm, which was far to early in my opinion. So I headed to Erlangen with a second group consisting of Rene, Markus and Katha taking the 5:30om train to Erlangen. And of course you can’t go to Erlangen on such a day without meeting other students and friends. Tim and our famous Iventscout-Party Team including Matze and DJ Hammer were on the same train.
Although the weather wasn’t too nice the Berg-area was quite crowded when we arrived there. After a few minutes we managed to meet up with our first group and found as a nice place at one of the beer gardens. Good to have a place to sit – but no music and unpleasant service (the waiter “by mistake” stole one of our empty mugs.) Having our first beer there we then decided to meet up with Tim and the other guys.
Arriving there at the other end of the Berg-area they were already enjoying themselves. It was really really crowded now, and standing near to a tree at some junction you had to take care not to be pushed away. But this was no reason to get our mood spoiled. Sometime later that evening Markus and me ended standing in front of one of the liquor stands... Luckily after 45 minutes our friends who had dropped us their managed it to return... We ended up partying at the Big Kitzmann tent. I won’t write about the events of the journey home on the train. But there is a nice video.. (which I can’t link here, but I encourage you to email Tim to see it
)
Like every semester the English Dramatic Society in Erlangen is performing. Here you can read the invitation and the plot:
Dear friends of the EDS,
It's been a while since we wrote to you, and indeed some of you have already written to ask us whether there will be a play this semester (yes, of course!), when the next show is (in two weeks' time) and what it's going to be.
We are now pleased to officially announce that the EDS will once again be performing the entertaining musical comedy (after Beaumarchais, written and directed by Damian H. Quinn) "F.I.G.A.R.O.", which some of you may well remember from February 1999 when one of our largest ever audiences filled the Experimentiertheater on a total of 8 evenings.
Whether or not you saw the show seven years ago, we promise you agreat show and look forward to welcoming you to one of our performances in February. If you did see the play last time though, you might just recognise a couple of old faces and will maybe remember some of the songs, and even the worse of the jokes. But don't w! orry, there many new faces, some new songs, and of course a few new jokes as well.
There will be performances every evening from 6th - 11th February, starting at 7 pm, as ever in the Experimentiertheater, Bismarckstr. 1 in Erlangen. Tickets, priced at 8 Euros and 6 Euros, are available now for reservation online via our website at http://www.english-dramatic-society.de.
If you prefer, you can also purchase your tickets from the English department library, room C602, Bismarckstr. 1, or the Kartenvorverkaufsstelle located in the Grande Galerie, Nürnbergerstrasse, Erlangen (from Tuesday, 24th januiary onwards), or from the Abendkasse on the evening of the performance.
Below a brief summary of the plot to whet your appetites. We look forward to seeing you in the Experimentiertheater in two weeks' time.
The cast and crew of FIGARO
English Dramatic Society, Erlangen
23rd January 2006A brief s! ummary of the plot:
The plot follows the lines of the! original Beaumarchais... more or less... but the setting is America. Figaro, a humble barber from the provinces, has risen from obscurity to become prospective candidate for state governor. Senator Almaviva invites Figaro to his country residence for the weekend. Here, after celebrating the Senator’s birthday and his wedding anniversary, the party will confirm Figaro’s endorsement as candidate for governor.
We discover that the object of Figaro’s affections, his right hand woman, Miss Suzanne Lincoln, while reciprocating Figaro’s affections is disinclined to marry him.
At the reception at the Senator’s residence, the Senator himself falls for Miss Lincoln’s not inconsiderable charms and orders his right hand woman, Jodie, to organise compromising pictures of Figaro which he then offers to give to Miss Lincoln in exchange for sexual favours.
From then on intrigue follows upon intrigue as Figaro and Suzanne, with the he! lp of the Senator’s long suffering wife, the Contessa, and pursued by the ever present scandal-hungry press corps, attempt either to recover the incriminating material or to acquire material which would incriminate the Senator and thus provide them with something to trade.
I'm really interested in seeing this play - probably someone needs a distraction from learning. Anyone interested in joining me is invited to contact me.