Even more information about the play DORF THEATER (in Swiss regional dialect, with English surtitels)

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Detail © Julian Blight
The extensive project website is full of images and links to the subject of amateur theatre in Central Switzerland (mostly in German only).
www.projektdorftheater.ch
Why amateur theatre?
The amateur theatre in Central Switzerland is a thriving and agile tradition. At least 126 theatre clubs are counted in the region, and about 1'500 - 2'000 members are involved in the regional association of Zentralschweizer Volkstheater (RZV). The shows are performed in Swiss regional dialects and are presented for the local village people. The shows are so popular that they are crowded to overflowing.
The productions are not subsidized but economically independent. They are based on the voluntary engagement by enthusiastic amateurs who serve in all areas from stage to catering - with all this involvement the performances are becoming an overall experience for the whole village.

Each of the five local partner society for the project DORF THEATER
What are living traditions?
The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO came into effect in 2006. It supplements not only the 1972 UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which focuses specifically on tangible and immovable cultural assets, but also the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions because intangible cultural heritage contain the building blocks of cultural diversity. The core value of regional and national identities was long under-estimated but the Convention remedied this situation by affording intangible cultural heritage the recognition it deserves.
Living traditions are our intangible cultural heritage. To stress the importance it gives to these traditions, Switzerland acceded to the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008. In doing so, Switzerland pledged to compile and periodically update an inventory of the living traditions found on its territory.
Basel carnival, Swiss graphic design, Hornussen and the Vevey grape harvest festival are some of the practices that feature on the current «Inventory of Living Traditions in Switzerland». The inventory will be updated continuously and includes practices from yesterday, today and tomorrow as long as they are still practised.

The «Trojan Pegasus» will appear as guest at Gessnerallee invited by DORFTHEATER. This media sculpture is a research and mediation project about the Swiss amateur open-air theatre. © Yannik Bürkli
©FreieOperZürich
Concept + Director
Corsin Gaudenz
(*1980 in Hallau) artist, author and director in theatre and performance, dance and music-theatre. Education as actor in Zurich (HMT), Master of Arts at UdK Berlin in Solo/Dance/Authorship and studied also at the acting school «Ernst Busch», Berlin. Member of the actor ensemble Theater Kanton Zürich until 2006, awards for his work as director by the City of Schaffhausen, 2008, and by the City of Zurich, 2013.
His last work «Tell» premiered in 2015 and afterwards toured through Switzerland. His productions have been shown at Tanz im August/HAU Berlin (2008) at Theaterspektakel Zurich (2015) or at Bellouard Festival Fribourg (2016).
www.corsingaudenz.ch
All biografies of the artistic team on www.projektdorftheater.ch
With his play «Tell» (2015) Corsin Gaudenz opened his trilogy about practices of immaterial culture.
Here an excerpt of a press review of «Tell»:
Tom Hellat, Tages Anzeiger
The latest production of ‘Tell’ begins in a relaxed manner with the sound of bells ringing quietly in the background – no fear of clichés here, then. The director Corsin Gaudenz and dramatic advisor Trixa Arnold recount Schiller’s tale in a very calm and unaffected way. They are not interested in relating a heroic tale, but in projections in the inner world of the characters. (…) Minor characters take centre stage, footnotes get elevated to main text, (…) the characters become human.
Such a relaxed use of major and minor keys is rarely heard in new music. (…) but the composer Ilja Komarov isn’t working his way through a catalogue of sty- les. One is constantly aware of a droll sense of humour gleaming through the melancholy of the music. The most honest description would be ‘conservative avant-garde’. The best of both worlds: the dignity that comes with historical forms of expression, on the one hand, and on the other, the right to combine or override such forms in order to create a new sound. (…) After decades of hy- ped up deconstruction, that’s quite a development. It really is. Perhaps it even foreshadows a new modernity.