Frankfurt Front Theater

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The Frankfurter Fronttheater was a cabaret theater that emerged from the Frankfurt spontaneous scene around the end of the 1970s, initially as Karl Napps Chaos Theater and as the Provisional Frankfurter Fronttheater . The front theater caricatured sharp-tongued socio - political issues. Its protagonists Dieter Thomas and Hendrike von Sydow shed light on the "war of the sexes" and fight - also in solo programs - with the pitfalls of everyday life .

history

  • Founding member Dieter Thomas

  • Founding member Matthias Beltz

The cabaret ensemble was founded in the fall of 1976. Motto such as “Atomkraft? No, thank you! ” , “ We want everything ” and other slogans sparked off the demonstration parades that passed through Frankfurt and which were supposed to mark the formation of the Green movement in the early 1980s. Issues such as the West Runway and the Wackersdorf reprocessing plant poured fuel into the fire of the protests. The anti-nuclear movement was at its height and squatting was the order of the day.

Against this background, a ten-person ensemble was formed, which initially called itself Karl Napp's Chaos Theater in reference to Carl Napp , but was soon renamed the Provisional Frankfurter Fronttheater . In personal union, everyone tried their hand at acting as actors , directors , musicians or directors of the theater. The founding members included the late Matthias Beltz and Dieter Thomas , as well as Hendrike von Sydow and Dietrich Stern. Thomas and von Sydow mostly appeared as a duo.

The starting points of the satire were themes from the early 1980s: the Frankfurt house-to-house war , women's movement and political felt .

"We said to each other that if the proletarians of all countries do not unite and do not want the revolution despite unsuccessful attempts at agitation, then we must think of something else."
“We wanted politics by other means. Theater on the street, at political events, on the specially created stages, the first of which in Frankfurt was the Batschkapp alternative bar . "

The ensemble soon developed into a "scene cabaret" and received a large number of visitors from the alternative scene , which the ensemble thwarted again and turned the tables to fire satirical peaks at its own audience.

The venue for the Provisional Frankfurt Front Theater was the Berger Cinema in Frankfurt-Bornheim , which was quickly converted into a stage. All the public relations for their program were done by the front theater organizers themselves (which they still do today). At first, the Fronttheater project did not seem to have met with much success, as the public television broadcasters shied away from excessive social and political polemics . It was only the ARD's youth editorial staff who dared to present the fresh satirical ensemble and gave them space for a 45-minute television program entitled "Freak and Peace", in which almost everything (including the actors in the cabaret) was dragged through the cocoa, what was there. This resulted in their own cabaret show “To Guest in the Front Theater”. From this point on, the ensemble was one of the big names in the satire and cabaret business.

In the meantime, the Preliminary Frankfurter Fronttheater had been reduced to three actors: Hendrike von Sydow and Dieter Thomas, also a couple in private, usually performed together, while Matthias Beltz played his solo program. Dietrich Stern also parted with the "Fronties". In the meantime, all three worked together, designed and conceived the set and jointly directed. In 1986/87 Matthias Beltz separated from Sydow / Thomas in order to pursue his own concept.

Beltz in his obligatory striped suit was satirically known for going from the "hundredth to the thousandth", the duo Sydow / Thomas, on the other hand, practiced their constant argument between couples and often involved the audience in their supposed dialogues.

In 1994 the extremely successful television series "Dieter and Hendrike" was broadcast on Radio Bremen . Appearances at the SFB's SatireFest and in the midnight peaks followed .

Since Beltz's unexpected death in 2002, the Frankfurt Fronttheater consisted exclusively of Hendrike von Sydow and Dieter Thomas. Both toured - sometimes individually, sometimes together - through the whole of Germany. Dieter Thomas died in 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Founders: Matthias Beltz , Cornelia Dohrn-van Rossum, Georg Kumpfmüller, Florian Lindemann , Dieter Thomas , Peter Timm , Klaus Trebes ; shortly afterwards: Philipp Mosetter and Hendrike von Sydow. From the end of 1977: Henning Burk, from spring 1979: Hilde Wackerhagen Matthias Beltz: Bio-Bibliography. Part 1: 1968–1991 ( Memento from December 16, 2011 in the web archive archive.today ). At: Zweiausendeins .de.