First Findings

Hello all!
I am the aforementioned Felix.
I'd like to thank Jenni for inviting me to do this, it feels all very exciting. I am currently sitting just near a window through which is streaming clean German sunshine so that's lovely, and frankly a surprise. Anyway, a tiny bit about myself. I'm 18 and from Reading and will be going on to do Drama and German at Royal Holloway University of London. Thus, coming to Düsseldorf combined both my love of theatre and German. I will be working at the Rheinschauspielhaus, which is one of the biggest in Düsseldorf, which has 13, so it's obviously an acitve scene. It looks like for the first week I will be helping in the junior theatre. My host family's 12 year-old son Johannes is in a musical which premieres next friday. I have been to watch two rehearsals already. It transpires that it is called 'Major Dux', a musical written specifically for this project by the author of the book of the same name. It is a fantasy tale, where 'Major Dux' a giant duck has fallen in love with Billi Butterfly (most definitely female), and is mesmerised by her singing, but because he can't hear her he bans music. However, our hero Batrolemeus Bop has other ideas and starts an underground jazz scene in the sewers. As it is a large cast and many of them very young, technical acting direction is naturally sacrificed somewhat in order for the right atmosphere to be created. However, the live band they use are very, very good, and some of the cast sing extremely well. The most interesting feature is their staging, in that they use equivalents of REALLY big children's building blocks to crawl through, create pictures as if picese of a jigsaw for location and also to create levels and shapes to denote where they are and to create not only sitting spaces for various characters but also to produce interesting staging. Not having done this before, I'm not really sure how much to write and what to write, so feedback is welcome. Hopefully i may be able to get my camera up and running and so some time towards the end of the week or after the premiere i can give you some semblance of a review.
Keep Smiling
Auf Wiedersehn,
Felix