Herford City Theater
The Herford City Theater is a theater without its own ensemble in the city of Herford with 692 seats. The house is used exclusively for guest performances by other stages.
deals
The city theater is purely a guest theater. Since the opening, there has always been a rich program offering with several subscription rings. With over 80 performances a year, it is firmly anchored in the city and in the East Westphalia region . A support association has been involved in the Herford City Theater since 1998. In the 1960s and 1970s, almost all performances were sold out, so that the theater was one of the most popular German guesthouses for several years. This was also thanks to Heinz Schön , who was the theater director at the time, who put together a highly attractive program every year. He succeeded in bringing well-known personalities such as Inge Meysel and Dieter Hildebrandt to Herford.
Since the opening, plays, operas, operettas, musicals, ballet, children's theater, cabaret ( Münchner Lach- und Schießgesellschaft , Dieter Hildebrandt), music events (jazz, music corps, wind orchestra) as well as performances by amateur theater groups have been offered. Thanks to the engagement of predominantly German-speaking guest theater stages, almost all stage actors of international standing have appeared in Herford.
The program is organized in subscription rings. There are currently three rings on offer in the area of drama ( drama , theater completely different , comedy & crime ) and two rings in the area of music ( opera , dance and more as well as operetta and musical ). The subscriptions can be used as a fixed subscription or as an optional subscription (with a free combination). The free sale for the coming season usually starts in August each year.
For many years, smaller performances, matinees , children's shows and exhibitions for up to 120 spectators have been held in the foyer .
Further theater performances, readings, cabaret and school events can take place in a studio with a maximum of 80 seats, whereby the seating is variable.
The theater is also available for various special events.
history
Herford has had a theater since 1874, with interruptions. In 1908 the city of Herford took over the hall building of the citizens' association next to the post office on the street Auf der Freiheit , but had to close it in 1913 due to structural defects and was only able to reopen it after the renovation in 1921 and then through to its closure in 1933 and destruction in 1944 Operate bomb hits as a city theater. From 1945 to 1950 the theater performances were carried out in the Capitol cinema on Elisabethstrasse. At that time there was the independent ensemble "Neues Theater Herford" in the city. After that, the small hall of the Schützenhof on Stiftbergstrasse was used as a temporary theater until 1961 .
The current building by the Paderborn architect Franz Allerkamp was opened on September 23, 1961 with a guest performance by the Detmold State Theater with the opera “Der Freischütz” by Carl Maria von Weber . It is on Mindener Strasse on the Lübberbruch site , where the Herford funfair and circus events were held until then. The theater was built together with the Ravensberger Gymnasium , which is right next to the theater. In order to save the auditorium when building the school , the theater also serves as the school auditorium . Several years after the inauguration of the theater, the school organ of the Ravensberger Gymnasium, which until then was still in the former school building of the Gymnasium on Münsterkirchplatz, was built into the theater. From the audience's point of view, it is on the left in front of the stage behind the wall cladding.
In 1984 the auditorium was completely renovated, the stage was renewed in 2008.
With the exception of the period between 1992 and 1998, when there was a small ensemble of its own, the theater was run exclusively as a guest theater. On September 22, 1995, a studio theater was opened in the area of the theater café with “Love Letters”.
The theater building has been a listed building since 2005 .
Due to the high need for renovation, the city of Herford is planning a new theater building near the freight station under the name OWL-Forum .
Seats
When the theater was built, there were 706 seats, of which 14 seats were reduced in favor of a lighting and sound system, so that today there are only 692 seats and four parking spaces for wheelchair users. 512 seats are in the stalls and 184 in the tier.
Flexible seating for a maximum of 80 people is possible in the studio.
Up to 120 chairs can be set up in the foyer.
building
The stage entrance and the driveway for the trucks with the scenery are on the south side of the 19.50 m high concrete theater tower, which houses all the technology and is adorned with theater masks and colored rectangles on its bare outer walls. This is followed by the actual 450 square meter theater hall, which is defined in the design of three disc-like segments pushed into one another and which is in front of the high foyer with a flat roof and a subsequent low wing structure. The entire building consists of a reinforced concrete structure that remained visible both outside and inside and was only partially clad.
The 480 square meter foyer consists of a wide hall with a large six-part window front that is slightly angled towards Mindener Strasse and only opens onto the forecourt, which provides a view of the spacious interior, which is defined by blue carpeting and light lamps hanging from the ceiling elegantly curved, free-floating staircase with an adjoining gallery for access to the audience gallery of the theater hall. At right angles to the foyer there is a lower, single-storey building with access with a vestibule and cash desk as well as a spacious room with a cloakroom at the rear and a “refreshment room” opposite the entrances to the foyer (later the so-called theater café).
Furnishing
The depth of the stage is 4.70 m from the curtain to the edge of the stage and 11.55 m from the curtain to the rear wall. In the area of the curtain there is an iron curtain that can be lowered in the event of a fire. There are a total of 51 spotlights on the stage and in the auditorium. There is no air conditioning.
The orchestra pit , which is created by removing the stage boards from the fore stage, is 35 square meters and offers space for 40 musicians. The head height is 2.30 m. The theater is equipped with a piano.
The studio stage is 10 meters wide, 5 meters deep and 3 meters high. The pedestal is 40 centimeters high. The stage has no curtain. There is a mobile lighting system in the 240 square meter studio.
To the side of the main stage are twelve cloakrooms for 72 people, an orchestra room for 40 people and a lounge for six technicians.
Organization and management
The Herford City Theater is operated as a legally dependent division of Kultur Herford gGmbH. This is a subsidiary of Herford Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (HBG GmbH) .
Karl-Heinz Rohlf has been running the theater since 2001. The theater office is located in the building of the city library at Linnenbauerplatz 6.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of architectural monuments in the city of Herford (PDF; 78 kB)
- ↑ Frank-Michael Kiel-Steinkamp: The new building for theater and orchestra costs 97 million euros. Retrieved September 13, 2019 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 7 '14.1 " N , 8 ° 40' 42.7" E