Association of German Open Air Theaters
| Association of German Open Air Theaters (VDF) |
|
|---|---|
| legal form | registered association |
| founding | 1974 |
| Seat | Hamm ( ⊙ ) |
| Chair | Wolfgang Schiffelholz (President), Heribert Knecht (Vice President) |
| Managing directors | Theo Krukenbaum |
| Members | 90 stages |
| Website | www.freilichtbuehnen.de |
The Association of German Open-Air Theaters ( VDF for short ) is a professional association that brings together almost 100 German open-air theaters from all over Germany.
history
The association was originally founded in 1953 as a merger of 13 open-air theaters from North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony and was initially called the "Association of Open-Air Theaters of Northwest Germany". The place of foundation was Hamm - Heessen , home of the founding member Waldbühne Heessen . This is where the VDF's North Region office is housed to this day. In 1963 the association area was expanded to include the entire Federal Republic of Germany with two independent regions, "North" and "South". In 1974, a joint statute of the federal association was passed in Horn-Bad Meinberg . There are still no member theaters from the area of the former GDR. The presidency in the federal government is held by the chairmen of the north and south regions in rotation.
tasks
According to its own information, the Association of German Open Air Theaters has the tasks of lobbying, networking, support and national public relations work for the member theaters. He offers training courses for actors on the member stages, especially for their youngsters. The association also arranges special conditions for its members for GEMA , artists' social insurance funds and various insurance companies. From 1956 the association for the North Region published the trade journal “Die Freilichtbühne”. When it was founded, the South Region also published a magazine called “VDF aktuell”. Both were merged in 2005 to form the joint trade journal “Freilichtbühne aktuell”. The association is in turn a member of various institutions in the regional and national cultural and theater scene. There is a membership in the "State Working Group for Game and Amateur Theater" in North Rhine-Westphalia, from 1967 in the "Kuratorium Darstellendes Spiel", as well as in the Bund Deutscher Amateurtheater , indirectly also in the German Cultural Council . Since 1977 the association has been publishing a collective brochure with all the performance dates of its member theaters; the circulation of this brochure in 2005 was 150,000. In 1975 and 1986/87 the VDF organized two author competitions for open-air theater. The 1975 award winners were Herbert Somplatzki and Gerhard Eikenbusch , and Reiner Baaken and Kurt-Achim Köweker were honored eleven years later. Since the pieces of the second authors' competition, with the exception of the winning piece, received little attention, no new competition was advertised in the following years. In the case of works for children's and youth theater in particular, the member theaters tended to rely on material that was already known from other media and thus had an impact on the public.
facts and figures
In 2014 the 90 open-air theaters of the association put on 1650 performances. The performances of the member stages attract between 800,000 and 900,000 visitors annually. In 2017, the association's open-air theaters showed a total of 1,733 performances of 149 productions and reached a total audience of 932,659.
Member stages
The association's 89 member stages are distributed among the individual federal states as follows (as of October 2015):
Baden-Württemberg
With 20 association stages in Mannheim, Möckmühl , Schwarzach , and twice in Künzelsau, Neuenstadt , Ilshofen, Besigheim, Ötigheim , Gernsbach, Grötzingen , Heidenheim , Oppenau , Reutlingen , Hornberg, Hayingen , Emmendingen , Sigmaringendorf , Fridingen and Herrischried, Baden-Württemberg has the most association members within a federal state
Bavaria
In Bavaria there are nine association stages in Sömmersdorf , Langenzenn , Cadolzburg, Nuremberg, Spalt , Donauwörth , Gundelfingen, Illertissen and Nördlingen.
Saarland
With the Volksbühne Hülzweiler and the Naturbühne Gräfinthal , Saarland has two member stages in the association.
Hesse
In Hesse there are 12 member theaters in the towns of Twist Valley, Niederelsungen , Burghasungen , Merxhausen, Korbach , Burgholzhausen vor der Höhe , Bad Orb , Büdingen , Hohenstein , Dreieich, Grasellenbach and Michelstadt .
Lower Saxony
With 18 member stages, Lower Saxony has the second highest number of members of all federal states. The stages are located in Jever, Westerstede , Lilienthal , Ahmsen , Meppen , Lohne , Daverden, Holtebüttel , Bad Bentheim , Wagenfeld , Mellinghausen , Marklohe , Stöckse , Georgsmarienhütte , Melle , Otternhagen , Barsinghausen and Salzhemmendorf .
North Rhine-Westphalia
After Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia is the federal state with the third most members in the association with 17 theaters. These are located in Reckenfeld , Hüllhorst , Nettelstedt , Porta Westfalica , Billerbeck , Coesfeld , Oelde , Horn-Bad Meinberg , Neuhaus Castle , Bökendorf , Heessen , Werne , Dortmund-Syburg, Herdringen , Balve , Alfter and Hallenberg .
Rhineland-Palatinate
Eleven member theaters of the association are located in Rhineland-Palatinate, these are in Schuld, Holzheim, Kaisersesch, Worms, Altleiningen , Bobenheim-Roxheim, Katzweiler , Landstuhl, Neustadt, Haßloch and Bad Dürkheim.
literature
- Karl Voss: open-air theater . dialog-Verlag, Münster, 2005. ISBN 3933144604
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b VDF image flyer. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved October 19, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Freilichtbühne Aktuell, edition 2/2012
- ↑ Freilichtbühne currently December 2017. Accessed on March 9, 2018 .
- ^ List of members of the Association of German Open-Air Theaters. Retrieved October 30, 2014 .
