Classical Youth

Lysistrata on the motorway!

semiramis — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:39:26 +0000

Today at the Ruhr Area, 60km of motorway A40 have been shut down for cars. Instead of motorised vehicles thousands of pedestrians and cyclists travelled in bright sun on the road. Along the route artists and local community groups offered a great variety of activities and presentations. Lysistrata had one more revival, on a stage near junction Duisburg-Harbour.

International Guests

Brenda and Renske had travelled all way from Nijmegen to take part in this new-old performance. Two days of intense rehearsal were enough to refresh text, change roles and adopt the scenes for a shorter version of the well known Lysistrata theme. People passing the stage stopped to watch despite the large offer of other activities. 30 minutes of performance passed quickly and was rewarded by the audience with loud clapping.

After the show the actors left the motorway soon in order to treat themselves with a bath in one of Duisburgs cool lakes.

Lysistrata – the Remix

semiramis — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:00:26 +0000

Thanks to Kemal, who did the editing, we present you here a video with extracts from all four performances we had from April 14th till 17th 2010. Enjoy!

More Memories

semiramis — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:34:07 +0000

Of more than 10000 photographs that have been taken during the project weeks we have now made a selection and created some new albums. Refresh your memories of the atmosphere during performances, everyday life and the trips we took together! Check out the gallery and if the pictures bring up new stories don’t forget to share them by typing in a comment!

Missing you all, Semi

PS: A big thank you to Kirsten and Dalia for chewing through masses of pictures!

Time to reflect

kontra-alt — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:34:11 +0000

Sunday morning before the first group had to go home, after a very short night of goodbye party, the group spent the last hours together on reflecting the time they had experienced together.
Johan Neijenhuis, the Dutch head of the project, opened the “Evaluation” by asking everybody to share their opinions honestly and openly with the group in order to give the organisers the chance to learn from mistakes.
Semi, German group coordinator, took over the moderation and started the session with a game. One participant was supposed to tell a statement and stand in the middle of the room – all the others had to take a position in the space according to the person in the middle, close if agreeing or distant if disagreeing. So most people where squeezing in the middle when the statement was “cooking together is good for group building”. Particularly individual were reactions to the statement: “There was no real socialisation and many people always stuck to their national group.” Many people stayed clearly distant to this opinion. At least in theatre groups the mingling and communicating with each other went really well, one said. One agreed that certain people had been integrating less but others instead had a very good contact to everybody in the group – it depended a lot on the personality.
For the second game Anita, Dutch group coordinator, asked everybody to split randomly in four groups. The task was within a few minutes to create a living sculpture representing “the ideal intercultural group”. The the resulting living sculptures had the titles: “Energy”, “Dreaming Culture”, “No War” and “Peace” (have a look a the image below!) Before break there was an open talk about the communication among the participants. It had turned out that the different languages were no problem at all, many people even started speaking English with people from the same country after two days. Everybody was glad to have the chance to improve their English. Finally the group talked about the issue that at the performance of the Turkish director’s group in Nijmegen there was less audience than for the other performances. The organizers were very sorry about that fact and promised to learn from it.

After the break each participant brought one item that should symbolize something they are going to take home from the project weeks. There was a rose, presented just after the show standing for the great moment of sucess, a camera representing the images that will stay, a programme booklet, a key that has opend new doors, a pair of glasses standing for a new vision on things.
In the end there was room for a personal comment of each one. Here some extracts:
- I had a fantastic time, I have met a lot of extraordinary, funny, nice people!
- Theatre was the reason for all of us to be here. We jumped from pages to stages. I personally have enjoyed the time with everybody here and I hope we will stay in contact!
- This project has shown that the prejudice saying that people speaking different languages do not understand each other is not true! I will remember every smile and every tear!
- I had very different expectations. I thought we will sleep, eat and rehears together but in fact we have done so much more together.
- I have learned a lot about other cultures.
- The project was a very good experience for me, I have never been in a big group like this, that was so well connected!
After the last words everyone held the others hands in a big circle raising their arms to a giant crown – what a beautiful closing image.

Kirsten Wiese

Back home

Lisa — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:05:53 +0000

Hi everybody,

I have to say that I miss you all very much! we were back home and the next day we had school till 6!

So I’m still very tired! how are you all? I heard that you’re al in Germany yet! Thats bad for all of you.

I was glad to going home sunday.. but now I wish I could go back to all of you, for a hug an a BIGGG party!

I hope we will meet again,

Byebye.., Lisa Jonkers

Ok, No Probelm, Arkadaslar!

semiramis — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:48:13 +0000

The project is over, the curtain has closed. Yesterday afternoon and this morning many tears were cried when first the Dutch group then the German group had to say good bye. The Greek group and our friends from Turkey had to move to an other youth hostel in order to wait for their trip home to be organised. Because of the closed airports it was not possible for them to fly this morning but maybe that will allow some of the people from Duisburg to see their project partners once more before they leave the city.

Saturday was the day of the last two performances. Anil and Serap from Riks theatre group talk about their feeling few hours before they go on stage, while the actors of Abdullahs group are getting ready for their show:

Just after the last show we talked to Ahmet (group Panos) and Joey who came just off the stage.

Even though the Classical Youth project weeks are now over the project goes on. Use this blog from now on to share your memories, write articles about what has happened, upload albums with photos, tell us your point of view as a comment to certain posts…

…let’s keep in touch!

Two Perfomances done

semiramis — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:54:57 +0000

The first two performances are over. Two theatre groups are happy and relieved but the same time sad about the fact that the project is going to end soon. Argyro and Joost talk about their impressions on the last days:

And here two more interviews held in the sunny city centre of Duisburg yesterday afternoon:

Of course the local and regional media reported as well about our performances. Here we go:

Article about the performance 15th April, group Kemal

Broadcast about the project on TV, WDR Lokalzeit Duisburg 15th April (start 8:25 min)

Arrived in Duisburg

semiramis — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:43:59 +0000

Just to let everybody know: we arrived safe in Duisburg and were welcomed by bright weather and a spectacular press conference. Thanks to du2010.de for bogging about us! Here is one video of the press conference:

More information on our project published by the official RUHR2010 site!