Et is a lively atmosphere in the sparsely furnished farmhouse parlor from the 1950s, decorated with a lace tablecloth on the table and an antique-looking rotating telephone next to the sofa. Lured by the outraged screams of the housekeeper Grete Puhl, Klaus-Dieter, her nephew, enters. “What’s going on?” he wants to know from farmer Müggensack. He replies dryly: “What’s going on, Klaus-Dieter, your aunt has resigned.” Klaus-Dieter, comically desperate: “Again?”
The farce “Müggensack sien Venus” by Tilly Hütter became known through the performance at the Ohnsorg Theater, which was recorded for television in 1977 – with Heidi Kabel as Grete, Jürgen Pooch as Bauer and Edgar Bessen as Klaus-Dieter. Director Norbert Kurtz is working on a current production in Geesthacht. He stands on the left edge of the improvised rehearsal stage and intensively plays along with his expression. Otherwise he lets the dialogue between the farmer and his somewhat careless housekeeper go on.
Kurtz knows that his actors from the association Niederdeutsche Bühne Geesthacht (NBG) – after a long break in rehearsals and some changes in cast – first have to get the text back on their feet before they can start fine-tuning. Stage language is Platt. Later, Kurtz then gives little tips that are based on many years of experience and that quickly make a big difference: An ironic smile turns the meaning of a comment upside down.
The farmer’s parlor is a portable stage set of the brand self-construction. For the time being, the scenery is in the club’s own rehearsal room in a former furniture warehouse in the building behind the local museum. For ten performances, the farmer’s room will be set up a few doors down in the Small Theater Schillerstrasse from April 2nd.
Twice a year, the committed amateur theater performs here in front of almost 300 spectators, eight to nine of the ten evenings are regularly sold out. Among other things, the rent is paid from the income: for a small theater hall, which is located directly next to the rehearsal stage, as well as for an extensive props department that has grown over the decades and the costume department in the adjoining rooms.
Housekeeper Puhl is called Christine Kasch in real life and farmer Müggensack is played by Torsten Kristof. Marcel Jammer, who is the first chairman of the theater association and who is the branch manager of the Sparkasse Holstein in his main job, takes over the part of Klaus-Dieter. The NBG has 37 members between the ages of 20 and 80.
Furniture, lamps and decorations in the bulging prop
Source: Bertold Fabricius
In addition to the spring and autumn pieces, the small troupe also puts on a traditional “Schummerstünn” at the end of the year, a colorful evening with skits, döntjes and music. It is not played outside the house, but in a separate small hall. The theater friends lovingly redesigned it during the Corona period. He’s gotten really comfortable. Carpenters, painters, electricians – all professions are represented in the association. There is a small bar behind the 70 spectator seats and a stage in front of it, donated by the local company CTS Composite Technology Systems.
The theater rooms are a second home
The theater rooms are a second home for most hobby players, many couples are there together. “You need a family or a partner who has your back,” says Jammer, “then it’s not a problem. Not everyone always has to give 250 percent. One acts, the other only builds the stage, which is not so time-consuming.”
With its passionate performances, the NBG is quite typical of the 38 amateur theater groups in the Low German Theater Association. Most play three plays a year. But there are a few houses that almost catch up with the two professional Low German stages, the Ohnsorg Theater in Hamburg and the Fritz Reuter Stage in Schwerin. This includes the Low German Stage in Kiel. In cooperation with the Kiel Opera, which builds her stage sets, she manages seven productions a year. The almost professional Niederdeutsche Bühne Flensburg celebrated its 100th birthday in 2020, one year after the Geesthachtern.
There are also around 3,000 amateur playgroups in the northern federal states, as the Institute for Low German Language in Bremen (INS) determined before the pandemic. Most only play one piece a year, around Christmas. For Geesthacht residents, the Ohnsorg is the obvious starting point for orientation at the professional theatre. “I really like going there, also to learn something from me,” says Jammer, “not only from the actors, but also from the stage design and and and …”
The Ohnsorg itself, in turn, likes to be a guest in Geesthacht – and plays its tour pieces in the same hall as the locals. Artistic Director Michael Lang used the pandemic to increase the number of guest performances and networking in the metropolitan region. Lang: “We have developed productions that are suitable for small stages that invite us, but where we cannot drive up with the big Ohnsorg truck and, like in Geesthacht, can put ten people on the stage.” Ohnsorg guest performances are marketed the local partner.
“In general,” says Lang, “the scene is very active and diverse, we are in regular contact.” The description “very active” hits the mark. “You have to have a passion for theater,” says Jammer. The 79-year-old director Kurtz, who has been an active member of the Geesthacht stage for 63 years, agrees with the 34-year-old chairman. Both share a love of the Low German language. Kurtz studied and spoke at home as a child. He regrets that the boys can’t just improvise on stage if they forget the lyrics.
For Jammer, Platt was only stage language before he also took over one or the other sentence in everyday life. “When talking to older customers in the savings bank, Low German helps to build trust,” he says, describing a practical aspect of the regional language. “For many North Germans, Low German has something to do with the concept of identity,” explains Reinhard Goltz from the INS, “however critical one may otherwise view this colorful term. For many, Platt is part of what makes home.”
For decades, the INS has been studying the spread of the language, which is now protected by an EU charter. The number of those who speak very good to good Plato fell dramatically from 35 to 15 percent from the 1980s to 2007 and then remained quite stable until the most recent survey conducted in 2016. Goltz cautiously estimates the total number of active speakers at around 2.5 million.
The children’s theater saves language teaching
Along with kindergartens and schools, the theater is the most important place for conveying Platt. The importance of the 3000 small groups is therefore enormous, according to Alexandra Schlenker from the INS. She points out that the language has been included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. Goltz emphasizes how important the 15 percent of theater groups are that also do children’s and youth theater on Platt – and thus reach around five to six thousand potential young speakers. In Geesthacht, too, the children are already playing their own performance op Platt.
Ohnsorg director Lang develops missionary zeal when it comes to the future of Low German. He refers to the 60 percent of those surveyed who stated that they understood little or no Platt at all: “Communication will be the central issue in the coming years,” says Lang, “because the baby boomers were the first to generally not understand Platt Platt have learned more than their mother tongue in the family, at work, in everyday life or at school.”
But if you think you don’t understand a word, don’t worry. “We have to overcome this hurdle,” says Lang, “that’s why we’re working more on mediation with our studio stage, for example, we’ve more than doubled the number of productions with the help of the Bodo Röhr Foundation and, for example, we’ve developed two classroom plays and a schoolyard play .”
Recently, the Ohnsorg has also been offering piece-related introductions to Low German on Thursdays before the performances in the big house. In addition, there are High German surtitles on some days. He was also skeptical at first, says Lang, “but it works extremely well, even for comedies with fast punch lines.” That means with plays like “Müggensack sien Venus” in Geesthacht. There, the audience has to do without High German lines above the stage when Bauer Müggensack overcomes the single existence he has been suffering from since his “Venus” Annemarie dumped him seven years ago.
Working as a pig farmer gave him problems with his intervertebral discs. And just when his sloppy housekeeper Grete Puhl is at loggerheads with accountant Wilfried Stöpsel, Venus returns to the farm out of the blue. In the end, despite the chaos caused by Puhl and Stöpsel, everything somehow falls into place again.