Maike Plath

Maike Plath (* 1970 in Flensburg ) is a German theater educator and author .

Live and act

Plath studied German, English and church music for teaching in Kiel . After her legal clerkship, she taught theater, German and English in Schleswig-Holstein from 1998 to 2004. In 2004 Maike Plath went to Berlin and taught there until 2013 at the Anna Siemsen Oberschule (now Alfred Nobel School ), a so-called focus school in the Neukölln district . In 2013, after 17 years of school service, she gave up her life-long civil service.

Maike Plath has been head of the youth theater projects (Active Player NK) at Heimathafen Neukölln since 2011 and has been on the board of the ACT eV association (formerly Mitspielgelportun eV Berlin) since 2013.

As a constructive response to her experiences in everyday school life in Berlin, Plath developed her participatory artistic concept after 9 years at a Berlin hotspot school, the so-called mixing console principle , which is now available in a total of nine publications and is passed on nationwide to theater pedagogues, teachers and cultural workers via ACT eV . The mixing console principle conveys self-determined and individual strategies of democratic leadership and can be transferred beyond the theater to other contexts and topics.

Plath is a lecturer at the Heidelberg University of Education and the Zurich University of Education and gives workshops, seminars and lectures nationwide on biographical theater, its participation concept and the status theory according to Keith Johnstone .

From 2008 to 2012, Plath was a board member of the Federal Association of Theater in Schools (BVTS) and from 2008 to 2016 a jury member of the Theatertreffen der Jugend Berlin. Since 2016 she has been working for BVTS as a trainer for the multipliers for the school theater of the federal states (SDL).

In 2016, the filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim accompanied Maike Plath's work for a year. This resulted in the documentary “ACT! Who am I ”, which was released in cinemas nationwide in 2017.

Mixing console principle and democratic leadership

The term mixer functions as both an image and a metaphor on the one hand and a conceptual description of the material on the other.

As a metaphor , the term describes the underlying thought that every person is understood here as a mixer with various individual options for action and design. These individual options for action and design are to be understood as the “channels” of a mixer. According to this picture, every person can control their own “channels” from “zero” (veto) to “very simple” up to “very complex”.

The aim of the conceptual approach is to show those involved their different options for action and design (mixer channels) and to gradually empower them to make their own channels increasingly autonomous and accomplished on a scale from "simple to complex" and in the direction of increasing complexity and To steer quality towards a common goal.

This happens through continuous work according to specifically formulated principles and with the mixer , which also means the material itself: the various cards (method repertoires: material boxes, published by Beltz Verlag, also theatrical mixer, see below), which in their entirety - in constantly new compositions and arrangements - form the common reference system to which a group refers in its design process and which is constantly growing as a common pool of knowledge through the further development of the group members.

The mixer principle conveys self-determined and individual strategies of democratic leadership and is therefore also a constructive suggestion for successful inclusion.

Literature (selection)

• Free yourselves! Guide to the Little Educational Revolution. Theory and practice . Books on Demand 2017, ISBN 978-3-746-01449-4 .
• With Lior Shneior: The repertoire of methods for dance and movement . Beltz, Weinheim 2017, ISBN 978-3-407-63027-8 .
• Teaching in a playful way and shaping communication - getting people excited about teaching with acting . Beltz, Weinheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-407-62956-2 .
• 96 training cards. Teaching while playing and shaping communication - the method repertoire for teachers. With online materials ISBN 9783407630049 .
• When I was once very happy ... Writing workshop - From biographical text to theater play . Beltz, Weinheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-407-62916-6 .
• Freak out with Engel-Stopp - the method repertoire extension set. Beltz, Weinheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-407-62923-4 .
• Participative theater lessons with young people, developing new perspectives based on practice. Beltz, Weinheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-407-62891-6 .
• Freeze! «&» Look at the audience! The repertoire of methods for performing games and theater lessons. Beltz, Weinheim 2011, ISBN 978-3-407-62775-9 .
• Biographical Theater in School, Staging with Young People: Performing Play in Secondary School. Beltz, Weinheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-407-62638-7 .

Web links

• Maike Plath homepage
• ACT eV homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.taz.de/!339406/
2. ↑ https://www.heimathafen-neukoelln.de/hhn_produktionen
3. ↑ https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/paedagogik/unsere_autoren/autorseite/1602-maike_plath.html
4. ↑ https://www.missingfilms.de/index.php/filme/10-filme-neu/256-act-wer-bin-ich
5. ↑ The mixing console principle - democratic leadership in theater lessons in elementary schools. March 20, 2019, accessed June 12, 2019 .