The First World War may be very distant for most of us, but our daily lives are nevertheless intimately connected to this period (1914-1918). It was a time of many social, cultural and political developments and a lot of historical incidents would never have happened if the war had not broken out. Theatre has the possibility to make the obscure past come alive in a wonderfully creative way. Join our playwright workshop!
Dive into the ocean of history, catch facts and situations, learn to develop plots and write your own scenes dealing with aspects of the First World War. Your tutor is Katja Hensel, a renowned German author of numerous contemporary plays. She will guide your writing process and help your story along. You don’t have to be an experienced writer. All you need is an interest in doing research on your own and enjoy thinking up stories and dialogues.
In the workshop you will use an innovative online tool called Noodi, which was developed especially for collaborative playwriting. You will be working in groups of four or five students from different countries for approximately four weeks. Via Internet each group will work on one scene and at the end of the workshop will have created their own mini-drama.
One of the mini-dramas will be selected to be directed by a professional director and performed by professional actors on stage during the official celebrations related to the 100th centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in Berlin. Whether or not your scene will be selected, you will be invited to the HistoryCampus in Berlin to meet the other writers and your tutor, talk about your experiences and present your mini-drama to other participants of the HistoryCampus.
If you’d like to breathe life into the First World War by writing personal, comical or maybe even strange or disturbing plots for the theatre, join this workshop!
Workshop speakers:
Katja Hensel, author and actress, Berlin