Program Overview
Are you excited by the opportunity to see plays and study performance in the heart of Europe--in Berlin, the German capital, cultural crossroad for East and West, North and South of the continent? This program takes advantage of Berlin's rich theatrical world. In addition to seeing a dozen or more plays in German, English, Yiddish, Turkish, Polish, and Russian too, you'll have the chance to talk about performance issues with actors, directors, artists, and critics. We will read and discuss most of the plays before we see them on stage.
We'll visit the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Volksbühne, the Komische Oper and the Schaubühne, as well as literary cabarets, a Berlin tradition since the Golden Twenties. The curriculum includes scene study and dramaturgical exercises.
If you are also interested in art, art history, music, film and literature you will find the summer session in Berlin especially enriching. We'll admire the magnificent Old Museum and Old National Gallery on the "museum island". Visits will also include New Synagogue, the Berlin Cathedral or the St. Hedwigs Cathedral, the Gendarmenmarkt (where you'll find Berlin's oldest theater), the Schauspielhaus (today a concert hall), and the German and French cathedrals. We'll walk by the Spree river to the rebuilt, modern Potsdamer Platz (former "no-man's-land" between East and West), stop at the Film Museum, and see the Reichstag, the German parliament building, and the Brandenburg Gate. And because you'll be living in Berlin, you'll have the chance to sample cafes in the Hackesche Höfe, a restored series of interlinking courtyards on Rosenthaler Straße, or try dinner at the Brecht-Keller, where they serve menus that Brecht's wife, the actress Helene Weigel, used to cook for her family and friends.
Students will live in the city at a youth hostel for the duration of the session. There will be excursions to Potsdam, to the rococo Sanssouci Palace and Garden, and to Stettin/Poland, the Hanse harbour at the Baltic Sea.
UD students pay all program fee deposits by direct bank transfer via this website: http://www.udel.edu/studyabroadpayments. Non-UD students should send a check, payable to the University of Delaware, to CFIS, Elliott Hall, 26 East Main Street, Newark, DE 19716. Credit card payments are not accepted.
