Kai Hensel

Klamm s war

classroom-theatre

Translated by::

Our play is for high school classes, current, former, and future students and teachers - as an encouragement that even so...

Theatre for students in school, in the classrooms, confronts them with the problems they face in everyday school life. With entertaining and thought-provoking content, it helps develop teenagers' communication, conflict management, and empathetic skills, as well as their ability to understand and process the theatrical experience more effectively.

The 'set' for this performance is the surrounding reality. The merging of the playing and the auditorium disrupts the classical actor-audience relationship. However, the classroom environment, in which, unlike the theatre, the audience can feel at home, can provoke even more from the pupils' expressions that test the spontaneity and improvisational abilities of the 'guest' actor.

More and more educators and theatre professionals are recognising that theatre can help teenagers to engage with previously taboo subjects successfully.

Classroom theatre is not a drama class, a travelling theatre in gyms or an "extraordinary literature class", nor is it a dramatic classroom teacher training. The definition of genre refers to a performance in which the dramatic effect is enhanced by the fact that the 'condensed reality', i.e. the fiction, is presented in a real location.

Klamm's War is a performance specifically designed for classroom presentation.

 

Klamm's war

This monodrama by contemporary German playwright Kai Hensel was awarded the German Youth Theatre Prize in 2002.

It is the story of a strange war between a teacher and a class, set on the battlefield of school, about the meaning of being a teacher, and, not least, the dimensional difference between work and dedication.

A class sends a letter to their silent teacher, Mr Klamm, informing him that they hold him responsible for the death of a schoolmate who committed suicide before graduation. In their declaration of war, they declare total defiance, a true passive resistance. Klamm tries to continue teaching in a typical school setting, but this is no longer possible in this class. He then declares his war, now against the whole school, a few of his colleagues and the headmaster. Scene after scene, the manners and behaviour of our hero are stripped away, and he loses his footing, starting to call out taboos that challenge the very foundations of school conventions.

The drama is not a monologue but a dialogue between the teacher and the students, where everything is revealed indirectly. The role of the class is, in fact, 'played' by the audience. Klamm tries in a variety of ways to get the students to forget this apparent link between the suicide girl and the deserved grade. He is trying every means at his disposal in the war.

The class does not respond to anything, they do not communicate with the teacher, they do not learn, and they boycott at all levels. This role is played perfectly by the audience. They respond in silence to the teacher's questions, statements, threats - this very protest screws Klamm. The teacher is constantly trying to communicate: first, he tries to calm the riot, then he tries to win the children over and use other techniques to get them to agree. He threatens. He attacks. He humiliates. He seeks a deal. He becomes a traitor. He humbles. He falls!!??

 

Synopsis translated by: Vivien-Tamara Sárközi

Cast of characters:

Premier: 2009.11.16