By jadoerge
Though I have been here in Bavaria with the Junior Year in Munich program for a few months now, every day brings a slew of new adventures and reasons that make me so glad that I chose to go abroad for an entire year and especially with this program. I suppose I should preface this post by saying that it will include some current issues in the media here in Germany as well as some interesting observations about German theater culture.
Right now, for instance, I am on a train leaving Hamburg where I just took in quite an interesting theatre production of J. W. Goethe's tragedy "Faust." It is an especially interesting time to see this play here in Germany in the midst of a rather heated debate about whether the word God (Gott) should remain a masculine word (Der Gott) or change to become neuter (das Gott). For those unfamiliar with Faust, religion and sexuality are both themes which are deeply woven into the play. I'm sure I could delve deeper into these notions, but for the sake of brevity, I will move onto the incredibly modern and rather odd interpretation of this nearly 200 year old story.
Let me begin by saying that Faust is almost never presented in its entirety with parts I and II both because of their combined length and the overbearing complexity of part II. Nonetheless, this theater troupe managed to do a nearly unabridged rendition of both parts in an 8-hour production. Yes, you read that correctly...8 hours in a theater with 3 short breaks.
I suppose a completely classical rendition of the play could've been boring and this production was far from being classical and boring. There were at least 5 random musical numbers, the main character was played by about 7 different people (male and female) at different points, a guy danced shirtless with a disco ball, The Final Countdown was woven in, and to top it off, an OCCUPY protest interrupted in the middle of the second act of part 2. To say it was interesting would truly not do the show justice.
After speaking with a professor here, it became clear that unlike in America, Germans don't really attend the theater to be entertained, but rather to learn and to see how old stories can be made relevant once again in modern times. While some of the production certainly was entertaining, most of it was spent making connections and allusions to recent German phenomena such as structuring a scene around a stage version of a very specific playground in Berlin where a variety of people spend time and a very specific retro stroller is coming back into fashion. While much of these references went over my head, experiencing the theatrical culture of Germany was certainly an experience that I won't soon forget. Well now it's back off to Munich where more adventures are always waiting. We might even get snow this week after not having seen it for nearly a month! Until next week!
Johannes