The children’s and youth theaters in Leipzig and Dresden are experimenting with digital formats in the corona pandemic.
Leipzig / Dresden – The children’s and youth theaters in Leipzig and Dresden are experimenting with digital formats in the corona pandemic.
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The theater of the Junge Welt in Leipzig relies on digital formats in the Corona crisis. © Jan Woitas / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa
The Theater of the Young World (TdJW) in Leipzig sends its on February 1st digital-analogues Project “Gulliver” on the trip. It should arrive from an animated web series on Youtube via a computer game in real life on the theater bus, as the TdJW announced.
The Dresden Theater Junge Generation (tjg) is currently inviting under the title “Departure terminal sofa“to digital surprise trips.
Winnie Karnofka, director of the TdJW, sees it as inevitable that a young theater should deal with digital formats. “Our audience is digitally native,” she said. “That doesn’t have to mean that we, as a theater, always move in digital space. But that creates different aesthetics, for example. We have to deal with that.”
“Gulliver” started in the Corona crisis, but was actually planned in advance. It was implemented with the Berlin Complex Brigade.
In another production, the “Frederick” puppet theater, the TdJW actually switched from the stage to Zoom in December because of the pandemic. “That goes down pretty well,” reported Karnofka.
Because the small viewers are also invited to participate, a real theater experience is also created via the video switch.
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Theaters in Saxony keep in touch with viewers via digital formats. © Jan Woitas / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa
The tjg in Dresden also relies on hands-on effects. The viewers of “Abflug Terminal Sofa” will get promised things in advance by post that they should and can use during the zoom switch.
The actors then tell the audience short stories in front of the screens, sometimes as puppet shows. “That is very well received,” reported tjg spokesman Norbert Seidel. The theater keeps setting new dates.
The Dresdeners are concerned with the digital offers to stay in contact with the audience, said Seidel.
It is also important for the actors to be able to play at all.
Finally, a third point is something that Seidel calls “cultural-political visibility”: the young theater should be perceived by the public despite its closure in lockdown.
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