I'm all packed up for Berlin! We have to meet in the foyeur of the dorm at 5:25 am tomorrow! I swear to God, they bump up our travel time by one hour ever week! I don't mind waking up early, but I really want to stay out all night on Friday, and waking up at 4:30 am makes me a schlafmütze.
The play (Kätchen von Heilbronn) was quite entertaining last night. I'll be honest, I didn't understand most of it, but Ute gave us a run-down in class that morning. The first 15 minutes or so were just actors talking in front of the curtain (it was supposed to be a courtroom, I figured that much out), but then the curtain came up and things really got interesting. The play was set in Medieval times, but it was put on by an "Experimental Theater Group," so of course nothing was what we expected.
All of the costumes were a mix of medieval, modern, and a bit of the 1970's too (a gold and maroon paisley suit for instance.) The "forest" was made from beads of varying lengths hanging down from the ceiling, and the characters would run through them and pretend to hide from each other (or when one of the guys got mad because his fiancee had disappeared, he ran straight through them and tangled them all up - so much work for the poor stagehands! lol)
The stage was covered in dirt and gravel, with a little pond in the middle (yes, real water) and a secret trap door that released steam (some sort of underground sauna?) The characters liked to run through the water, or fall in the water, or use the water as an excuse to become partially unclothed. They also used a lot of umbrellas as props. I'm not quite sure what they were supposed to represent (no one ever went under them), but the colors matched the mood of the setting. Also, when a character wanted to represent travel, they would run in circles around the stage multiple times. I couldn't help but notice that they were all impeccably fit! The last 5 minutes of the play was filled with interpretative dance to old American music. We were all giggling, but the older members of the audience seemed to find it quite normal. The best part was when one guy grabbed two towels and started flailing them and spinning in circles. Others were doing pantomime dances, or as Anthony called them, "zombie dances."
And now the part you were all waiting for - partial nudity! The male main character had his shirt off for pretty much the entire second act, but he wasn't much to look at. The two guys that kidnapped one of the main female characters were pretty ripped, but they didn't fool me no matter how straight they acted. Yeah, I heard you call him your "Freund"! haha The other main female character (Kätchen), had her dress ripped off right before the intermission, so we saw a bit of boobies before she pulled it up again. When we came back from intermission, she was still lying in the middle of the stage in only her underwear. Poor girl must have been freezing up there! Apparently our teacher Henricks told Jason, "Now that's a nice sight to see." haha. Poor Jason. He wanted to sleep through the whole thing but then he had to sit by the teachers. At least the partial nudity made up for some of it, and no one could sleep through the dancing!
I just realized that some of you might actually want to know what the plot from the play was, and while I do have a basic understanding of what happened, it's too much of a complicated love triangle to explain in one paragraph. So I found the Wikipedia article, but of course it's in German. In any case, if you're inclined to copy and paste it into Google translator (can I get some money for a Google promo in my blog?), here's the link: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Käthchen_von_Heilbronn
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