German puppet Artist Günter Staniewski performed The Animal Musicians of Bremen, a puppet show adapted from the famous Grimm’s fairytale at the Student Center on the third floor of Dining Hall Ⅲ at 7:30 p.m. on 17th October, 2014.
Puppentheather (puppet show) is steeped in a long tradition and exerts important influence on the art history of Germany and even the Europe as a whole. Young Goethe, for example, was obsessed with this artistic form.
Günter Staniewski is one of the renowned artists from the Luka Paka Puppet Play Troupe founded more than 30 years ago and the Troupe enjoys a good reputation in Germany for its great performance.
During the performance, Staniewski utilized several unique yet simple tools to recount the plot and depicted the story on stage with his vivid facial expressions and diversified body languages. When briefly introducing the plot, he orchestrated little puppets and two red hot water sacks to act as the four abandoned animals (the donkey, the dog, the cat and the rooster). They came together to the Bremen and at night they broke into a cottage. When they found out that the cottage was held by a group of robbers who were spending the night there, they fought wisely and bravely with the robbers. The performance received a thundering applause from the audience.
Besides the performance, Günter Staniewski organized and chaired a puppet show seminar on Oct. 18th for the students from department of German. 15 students participated in the seminar and had a heated debate on the puppet show’s performance practices, performance art and the classical content of the fairy tales and even the blemish of Günter Staniewski’s performance. The students even improvised some fairy tales at the scene. Günter Staniewski was happy for the students’ creativity. He said that China might have a wide range of literature genres but lack the fairy tales with local characteristics. He hoped that his puppet show and this seminar could arouse more Chinese students’ interests in the fairy tales and puppentheater so as to promote the cultural exchanges, especially the folk cultural exchanges between China and Germany.
SFL hosted the activity which was co-organized by Consulate General of Germany in Chengdu and German Robert-Bosch-Stiftung Foundation. Foreign teacher Juliane Heimann and Dr. Hei Jun as well as junior students from the department of German worked hard to make the activity possible.
Recent years has seen not only the growing strength of department of German in the German teaching and research, but also the role it has played as the most important partner with DAAD, Goethe-Insitut and German Robert-Bosch-Stiftung Foundation in Sichuan Province. The department of German has been involved in and hosted a series of academic and cultural exchange activities, creating opportunities for students majoring in German to improve their learning and exchanges, expand their horizons and strengthen their abilities in putting the language into use.