German thespians entertain local crowd
German thespians entertain local crowd
By CHRISTOPHER DIEM Journal Staff Writer
MARQUETTE — In William Shakespeare’s classic comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” the wily and mischievous character of Puck remarks “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
Fools or not, some mortals gave a spirited and exuberant performance of Shakespeare’s comedy Thursday night at the Masonic Building in Marquette. All of the performers were from Itzehoe, Germany. The group is touring Michigan as part of the International Youth Exchange program out of Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in downstate Twin Lake.
“It’s the most famous comedy of Shakespeare,” said Tine Koch, who plays Puck. “We had performed the play in Germany two years ago and when we were invited to come to Michigan, we created a personal American version for it.”
The theater group, based at the Kaiser-Karl School in Itzehoe, included some of the original Shakespeare text in the play but added new parts, modernized it a bit, invented songs and gags and even added references to Michigan.
Koch said it was a challenge to perform the entire play in English.
“We’ve been working on this a year. We didn’t originally plan to do the whole thing in English. We thought it might be possible to have some German scenes, and people in the audience would have to understand through the acting.”
But as the actors progressed with their work and they became more and more skilled with the language, they decided to do the entire play in English.
“Some of our younger people have only been studying English in school for two years,” Koch said. “They must know what they are saying every minute in the play, they couldn’t just learn the text by heart and say something they don’t understand.”
Most of the performers have been to Michigan before through the youth exchange program, but never to Marquette.
“(Marquette) is a wonderful, real city. Lake Superior is fantastic,” said the production’s director, Doris Brandt.
The group was sponsored by North Star.
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