Showcasing our Work
German Theater Troupe
In the past, students of German have been avid performers of theater plays, cabaret, and videomaking. We have found that actually creating things in German ñ making videos and documentaries, performing plays, writing short stories ñ is for us the best way to learn, practice, and to master the language.
Only half in jest, we have considered changing the name of our department to Performance Studies in German. We have found that actually creating things in Germanómaking videos and documentaries; performing plays; writing short storiesóis for us the best way to learn, practice, and to master the language.
This process is partly hard work, partly serendipity, and largely depends on a willingness to collaborate. In the past few years, we have been fortunate to count a gifted playwright and a number of gifted actors among our students. Begun in 1998, our German theater troupe continues to enrich the department in aesthetic and in practical ways. Original plays by Laura Jones have won the Mt. Holyoke College German Theater Festival two years running. We are anticipating a cycle of plays this spring as her senior thesis. The enthusiasm and synergy created by live theater among our students bleeds over into the classroom. There, we have focused with notable success on theater texts; film scripts; or video performances of scenes from plays or of our own adaptations. Through performance, students are developing self-assurance and a lack of self-consciousness in speaking German.
In 2002, two seniors who wanted to do something entirely different for their senior seminar began an experiment in video film-making that has long-range consequences for all our German classes. Starting from scratch, Danielle Taylor and Anna Venishnick compiled 30 hours of digital film footage and interviews and transformed that raw material into a compelling 45-minute documentary film. Many of us in the department learned along with them the basic principles of camera work, digital editing, and subtitling. Anna and Danielle have set a high standard and opened the door for alternative senior seminar projects and theses in the future.
So, on these websites we want to "publish" and archive examples of this creative, enthusiastic, and, yes, intellectual process. You will find here theater texts, photos from rehearsals and performance, and ìstreamingî videos in German. That is not to neglect our written work in German and in German Studies. But in the last couple of years, we have learned to collaborate; we have come to see how in an academic setting, words and images can go hand in hand.