Gisela Höhne

Gisela Höhne (born February 4, 1949 in Suhl ) is a German theater director. Due to her success in working with mentally handicapped actors, she is internationally recognized as the best-known director of this genre.

Life

Dr. Gisela Höhne, born in 1949, actress, theater scholar, director and artistic director at the RambaZamba Theater in Berlin (also managing director). Growing up in Stralsund , she was denied her dream place in psychology because of ideological differences to the “psychology of the workers 'and peasants' state”. In 1967 she moved to Berlin, which has been her artistic and life center ever since. She studied film directing for a year at the Babelsberg State Film Academy , but quickly switched, as her love for the theater was much greater than that for film. Three years of study at the State Drama School in Berlin-Schöneweide . During this time she saw important performances at the Berliner Ensemble since 1967 and was magically attracted by the productions at the Deutsches Theater (DT), in particular by Besson's Peace , Dragons and Oedipus Tyrann and by the directing style of Adolf Dresen . In 1974 she played the role of Theresa in the studio production Glory and Death of Joaquin Murieta by Pablo Neruda . Erforth / Stillmark staged this outstanding staging in the DT rehearsal stage, which broke with all conventional theatrical means of realistic theater . Another influence later became the Volksbühne with the productions Karge / Langhoff and later Heiner Müller .

Höhne received engagements in Dresden and Neustrelitz , which were, however, significantly affected by the birth of their first son in 1976. Moritz was born with Down Syndrome , two years later she had to give up the acting profession, in 1979 her son Jacob was born. Höhne and Erforth became a couple in 1974, and a twenty-year partnership began. After the private separation in 1993, the collaboration at the RambaZamba Theater continued until 2010, where both staged side by side.

From 1982 to 1987 studied theater studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin . She describes this as the “second important mainstay” (the first of the acting profession). In 1990 she received her doctorate. The openness to world theater experienced in the field of theater studies and the associated broad concept of theater made everything possible that determined her future life: 1987 founding of the circus “Bimbo”, in which mentally handicapped children appear in public for the first time in the GDR . It will be a very special poetic circus in which the children show what they can do - balance, roll fast, be complicated ball choreographies or just be a lion. “This work led to the discovery of the special creativity of people with intellectual disabilities. It made you want more, which was not possible in the GDR until the fall of the Wall ”.

Sundial e. V. / Theater RambaZamba

In 1989 Gisela Höhne and Klaus Erforth designed the sundial e. V. as a workshop for the arts for people with intellectual disabilities and others. In 1990 they presented themselves with it at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in a three-hour matinee “What an island in what a sea”. In 1991, Höhne began her successful directorial work with actors with intellectual disabilities and earned storms of enthusiasm with her first production of Prinz Softherz in the sold-out Deutsches Theater Berlin. Since then, her credo has not been any kind of compassionate ambition, but rather high performance and the greatest improvisational openness. With that the RambaZamba theater was founded. With Höhne's production A Winter Night's Dream (1993), a separate venue was opened for RambaZamba - the “theater in the horse stable” in the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg culture brewery . The press reacts with The other avant-garde is here . The RambaZamba theater was born.

Until 2017 she managed this art workshop with the theater, in which well over 100 people with so-called disabilities work in almost all arts and around 60 employees work in the studios, in the office, in the technology and in the theater. The pieces and works of art created here are valued by famous colleagues: Angela Winkler , Eva Mattes , Meret Becker , Achim Freyer , Nino Malfatti , Otto Sander and many others. Management and lobbying were part of a job the success of which is hard-earned. With ever increasing support, she organized exhibitions, art festivals, workshops, international festivals, benefit and readings.

From 1995 to 2010, Höhne invented and staged a total of 11 full-length pieces of his own in the RambaZamba and during this time made the troupe the “most important integration theater in Germany”, where “disability does not appear as a shortcoming, but as a strength”.

There were also performances of Dolls and Perfect , Encounters in Mongopolis (2003 in Stadtbad Oderberger Straße ), the staging developed together with Klaus Erforth, Love goes through the stomach and numerous workshops (including in Basel and Graz). In 2008 she prepared readings with disabled actors and organized the series Funken im Stein .

Several times a year she went to guest performances with her ensemble, since 1991 to over 100 invitations all over Europe. The aesthetics developed by her and her troupe made the ensemble the benchmark in Germany and beyond for many who also try to work professionally with actors with disabilities. Höhne gave lectures on her way of working and was a lecturer at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.

About how Gisela Höhne works

As Gisela Höhne already formulated during the circus work and later explained in lectures (1995 Lingen), it is important to take a completely unbiased view of these actors and to discover their own qualities. The priority was not the play and roles and then the possible cast, but the actor personality from which the roles were discovered and developed.

Dialogic work became the basic principle. There was no piece from the start, just a theme, a plot, an idea. The following rehearsal process runs as a constant mutual dialogue in which the ideas of the director and the possibilities of the actors rub and promote each other. In the end there is the play, directed by the director, invented together with the actors. It is always a matter of not taking the alleged deficits as such, but rather as a starting point and challenge for new creative solutions, i.e. recognizing the "deficit" as a strength. The actors are systematically trained and developed so that there is no such thing as a “demonstration of deficits”, but rather personalities on stage who have already been able to play major film and television roles. In 2007, her piece Mongopolis was used as the template for the first radio play with people with disabilities, directed by Gabriele Bigott, first broadcast by RBB , then by several other stations.

Appreciation

“The RambaZamba theater doesn't mean it well per se. Because what distinguishes it is that it owes its existence and its success to no socio-educational benevolence and was never intended as a therapeutic measure. Theater with 'people with so-called intellectual disabilities' - as they call themselves. Probably 'well meant' was the true initiation experience of the two founders, a Christmas fairy tale in which Moritz Höhne also took part in 1986, the son of Gisela Höhne and Klaus Erforth, who had a doctorate in theater studies. Anyone who has seen a performance by RambaZamba, in its lustful and amusing lack of inhibition and excess, its inescapable immediacy, will feel at every moment that the players are professionals. Professionals who not only know what they are doing, who have practiced and trained for years, but also have special talents that lead to unconventional artistic solutions. You leave the theater physically agitated. RambaZamba isn't just well done, it's a special challenge for its audience. In its circus opulence it is never pure entertainment, the selected dramatic and mythological figures such as Medea, Woyzeck and Orpheus also experience very concrete and uncomfortable political dimensions in their special representation ”.

“Artistically the highest quality and also heartbreaking ... a highly professional theater, where mainly mentally handicapped people play ... You really leave this evening with a positive shock that is lasting. I was so happy that we started this program, it would have been worth it only because of this one evening ”.

“The other avant-garde is there. In a certain way, this theater, which sometimes seems naive as child's play, sometimes very existential, corresponds to a different form of the avant-garde ”.

Productions

• 1991: Prince Softheart
• 1993: a winter night's dream
• 1995: Coffee life and death
• 1997: Medea - the deadly competition
• 1999: Weiberrevue
• 2001: Orpheus without an echo
• 2003: Mongopolis - fish or duck
• 2005: Alice hunting rabbits (open air for children)
• 2006: A heart is not a soccer ball
• 2007: Alice in the Runs
• 2009: and are we gods ourselves ... The winter journey
• 2010: Peace - A Festival (Open Air)

Awards

• 1994: New Year's reception at the Federal President von Weizsäcker
• 1996: "Promotion Prize for Performing Arts" from the Academy of Arts to the RambaZamba Theater (March 18, 1996)
• 1999: Special prize for “MEDEA” (directed by Höhne) at the 4th “Politics in Free Theater” festival in Stuttgart
• 1999: German Children's Culture Prize from the German Children's Fund e. V. to the SONNENUHR e. V.
• 2001: In March of this year, the poster campaign “Women move Berlin” started, initiated by the Senate Department for Labor and Women. 15 committed Berlin women, among them Gisela Höhne, were presented in words and pictures on posters in public spaces all over Berlin.
• 2002: Prize of the German Down Syndrome Society to Höhne / Erforth
• 2002: Awarded the Berlin State Order
• 2004: BZ culture award for outstanding achievements to Gisela Höhne and Klaus Erforth. The RambaZamba theater is recognized as one of the best and most touching artist ensembles in Berlin and an internationally recognized institution
• 2004: Invitation with Höhne's production of Mongopolis to the 6th Festival “Politics in Free Theater” in Berlin
• 2009: Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon
• 2014: Caroline Neuber Prize of the City of Leipzig

literature

• Friederike Frach: Dealing with the mentally handicapped in society . Master's thesis, submitted to the Humboldt University in Berlin, Institute for Cultural Studies in November 2002, pp. 76–81
• Birgit Winkler: Musical-artistic working methods in the context of integrative objectives with people with intellectual disabilities using the example of the theater group “RambaZamba” . Scientific term paper on the first state examination for the position of teacher at special schools, submitted to the Berlin University of the Arts, Department of Music Didactics in December 2001
• Ursula Menke: “We do theater!”, The “handicapped” theater “Ramba Zamba” - theater with mentally handicapped people in the field of tension between therapy and art . Master's thesis, submitted at the Free University of Berlin, Department of Theater Studies, in March 1995

Web links

• www.rambazamba-theater.de
• planet-wissen.de
• diegesellschafter.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ planet-wissen.de
2. ↑ Last game of the "Kalibanis"? In: Berliner Zeitung , December 9, 2010
3. ↑ theaterderzeit.de
4. ↑ planet-wissen.de
5. ↑ theaterderzeit.de
6. ↑ From colleague to colleague . In: Berliner Zeitung , April 15, 2010
7. ↑ Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung , September 6, 2001
8. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau , September 6, 2001
9. ↑ Bettina Bartz, Claudia von Zglinicki (ed.): A dream of theater . Theater RambaZamba & Sonnenuhr ev self-published, 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027604-0
10. ^ Ulrich Khuon, director of the German theater. In: BZ , August 1, 2010, Culture
11. ^ André Heller , curator of the federal government's art and culture program for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. In: Ballverliebt - Die Nacht der Fußball-Kultur , Arte , April 21, 2006
12. ^ Gisela Sonnenburg. In: Neues Deutschland , October 8, 1993