Advanced Class 25/26

This demanding course is for people who already have previous acting knowledge and want to deepen it in a clear, ambitious and reflective way, in a new stage on the long road to mastery. It is expressly not suitable for people who are looking for quick solutions and shortcuts. The curriculum is a further development of the Advanced Class 23/24 curriculum, the goal is artistic maturity. The course concludes with at least three public performances of a jointly developed production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

At the heart of the course is Edward Gordon Craig’s poetic concept of the “super-marionette”, a fictitious ideal actor who never gets in the way of his own shortcomings in artistic creation in the service of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Gordon Craig summed this up in a simple formula: “The super-marionette is the actor plus fire minus egoism”. In the course, we set about pursuing this ideal with great relish and, of course, inevitably encounter our own, much more succinct conditionalities. We put together individual toolboxes with which we can creatively build what could be, in confrontation with reality, with what actually is. And on the way there, we get to know both the world and ourselves as part of the world as well as we can only know things that we have already bumped into. In this way, we develop an image of ourselves in action that we can do something with. And the wonderful thing is that we don’t do all this theoretically, but it happens directly in the theatrical creative process, because in the course of the course we work on a production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which is then performed in public with at least three performances. As we build our scenes, we imperceptibly build ourselves as capable actors, with capable perception, thinking, feeling and artistic action, and in capable artistic interaction with the audience.

The course is guaranteed to be free of hollow phrases such as “you weren’t really into it” or “you need to want it more”. Instead, there is functioning, state-of-the-art knowledge, as dialog teaching, in continuous exchange between teacher and students and in constant blending from practice to reflection and back.

The course comprises at least 150 teaching hours. In addition, there will be at least 150 hours of independent work time necessary for lesson preparation, working on assignments and independent scene study alone or in small groups. There will also be required reading: Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, other Shakespeare sources, short theoretical and theatre-philosophical texts, as well as short introductory texts in some scientific fields underlying drama.

In order to provide the best possible individual support, the course works with an elastic curriculum, with requirements that everyone must fulfill and, in addition, challenging tasks for those who want more. In the interests of the participants, the course concludes with a three-stage graded certificate, a top grade that is difficult to achieve and the option of failing the course.

Participants can attend the Friday Evening Class at a significantly reduced rate and the course “Theatre as a Practical Philosophy of Human Action” free of charge.