Von Mara Fischer (Klasse Gym-10b/Online-Redaktion)

7th September was not a normal Tuesday. It was the day when “The White Horse Theatre” visited our school. After its team had arranged their stage and props, the younger pupils were invited to see the play “Neighbours with long teeth”. After that the actors had to change the scenery quickly to be right in time for the novel adaptation “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (by Oscar Wilde). The older pupils (grade ten to thirteen) were waiting to see the drama that I want to comment on.

Alyssa Burnett, Chris Carruthers. © The White Horse Theatre

By the way: What is the “White Horse Theatre”? The homepage tells us: “White Horse Theatre is a professional theatre company which specialises in the use of theatre as an aid in the teaching of English.” That means that the actors travel around in countries whose native language is not English; most of their performances are in Germany. The company wants to show pupils – and adults – that English can be interesting and funny. The complete opposite of what many children think about their lessons in school.

The actors are great actors

But let us get back to my review. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” deals with the young and adorable man Dorian Gray who wishes that his portrait would change while he stays the same forever. And his wish gets fulfilled. Throughout his whole life his face remains unblemished but the picture uncovers his ugly and heartless soul. It is to know that the self-centred Dorian does whatever is necessary to live a carefree life, no matter what the price to pay for it is. He kills, he lies and he threatens friends. With everything the portrait gets more deformed while he himself stays beautiful. However Dorian notices that he cannot stay like this. He desperately destroys the painting and with this, he dies.

The actors who visited Oberurff are great actors. Every single one is a talent and it was amazing to see how they perform. They were able to switch between their roles and it is surely hard to show the audience two different roles right after each other. But it was always clear to me. The scenery was kept very simple so that the main attention lay on the actors and the text. The text is a critical thing again. Although the four actors are all native English speakers with a maybe unfamiliar British accent, this has not been the problem. Rather the speed of the conversations. Most of the pupils are not used to fast dialogues which has sometimes made it hard to understand the context. You had to listen and concentrate for a pretty long time during the play. Maybe for too long. It was easy to see that the attention of (mostly the younger) audience slightly went astray in the last 30 minutes. A little shorter would have been better, then.

The “language problem” could have been solved by watching the self-explanatory performance but there was also a difficulty in our gym. The people in the back of the hall were not able to see anything because of a missing stage. And this, combined with the fact of not understanding the text meant boredom for some people and with this an even bigger lack of concentration and silence.

Imagination is always a big point

The play itself was really good. The crew used the possibilities of theatre. I personally liked the scenes best in which the artists wore masks. It was clear that they cannot be actual humans but one must think about their real meaning. Another good thing was not to show the picture. Imagination is always a big point in theatre and changing the picture every ten minutes would be a wasteful effort. Furthermore the crew used only a small number of props. But these props were mostly necessary and explained a situation. There were plenty of characters and they were all played authentically.

I think that the White Horse Theatre’s concept should be welcomed in schools more often because it really is an interesting project. The actors work hard to show the pupils a different side of English. And their result is an entertaining show which makes the audience discuss and think about the play. Although some people had problems with understanding and watching the performance I mostly heard good things about it. This has hopefully not been the last time the “White Horse Theatre” visited our school!

Linksunten:

White Horse Theatre – Theater zum Englischlernen

(Gestaltung: abu)