And please! That was the motto as soon as the kids took to the stage during the Easter vacations and put their improvisational talents on show. From 3 to 5 April 2023, children and young people were able to give free rein to their creativity in the theater workshop with teachers from Theater 3D in Wiesbaden. Everything was allowed, they shouted, crazy movements appeared on stage and colorful stories emerged. The Idar-Oberstein Youth Welfare Office and the Kiwanis Club organized a three-day children's and youth theater event for this year's Easter vacations, which started with an improv theater workshop in the morning and ended with a public performance by professional actors at lunchtime. The theater project was financially supported by the LAG Erbeskopf and the federal action program "Catching up after Corona".
The workshop, for which it was possible to register in advance, took place with two different groups at two locations. Almost twenty children between the ages of 6 and 12 met daily in the Göttenbach Aula. The modernized event space offered the best opportunities to learn a wide range of basic skills as part of the theater education project week. In addition to the classic group and improvisation games, the dynamic group process quickly gave the highly motivated children the opportunity to stage their own play on the final day on the stage of the so-called "good room" of the city administration. The young actors developed the dance and theater play "Die Idarer und die Obersteiner" with a great deal of enthusiasm and creativity. In a highly humorous way, twenty children presented a varied final performance to their parents, friends and relatives. The dance and theater battle not only made the children smile about what is probably the longest rivalry in the world between the people of Idar and Oberstein, but also led to the final unification of the two groups into the "Idar-Obersteiner". The theater project ended with thunderous applause and several encores, which also highlighted the group's vocal potential.
At the Heidensteilschule location, the twenty children and young people aged between 7 and 14 focused on confident and imaginative improvisation in front of an audience. Various games and improvisation exercises were designed to show the children how to use their voices and bodies on stage. There was a lot of laughter during the three days and the children quickly settled into their roles within the group. The "strict boss" exercise was particularly popular. The aim of the exercise was to encourage the children to speak without thinking about what they were saying. This gave the actors more confidence when improvising on stage. The "still images" exercise encouraged creativity to develop and implement spontaneous ideas on stage. With the help of props, the children slipped into different roles. For example, a fire elf suddenly appeared on stage, a tennis racket transformed them into a rock star or a hat became a cooking pot. And finally the time had come. On the day of the final presentation, all the improvisation exercises were played through again and put in the right order in a kind of dress rehearsal. The children quickly realized that it is important to remain calm backstage so that the audience can understand the performance on stage. The children proudly presented what they had learned in a big stage show. The audience was thrilled and the children received a huge round of applause.