The world of languages
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| 4 EUR, reduced 2 EUR |
| Duration: 30 min |
| Doors open: 15 minutes before start of the event |
| German, Italian |
| Ground Floor, Hall 3 |
| Part of: Story Theatre |
Anansi the spider wants to capture all the knowledge in the world and keep it in a pumpkin for himself: recipes, building instructions, formulae, even vocabulary and rules of grammar. Wilhelm von Humboldt wanted to collect vocabulary and grammar rules too. But he wanted to share them with as many people as possible. He was fascinated by languages, and learned more than 30 himself.
In two of these languages, Italian and German, Maria Carmela Marienlli and Naemi Schmidt-Laubner transport their audience into the world of languages, experimenting with sounds, word chains, and animal languages, telling stories about Wilhelm von Humboldt, and encouraging them to preserve language as a valuable treasure.
Maria Carmela Marinelli is a storyteller, theater educator (M.A.) and DaF/DaZ teacher (M.A.), trained at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. She is involved in storytelling projects in Berlin and Saxony, performs at international storytelling festivals, and leads training courses on tandem storytelling, multilingual storytelling, and storytelling in foreign language teaching at the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Jena. She narrates with great vitality, suggestiveness, humor, and exuberant temperament in German, Italian, and Spanish—and when language is no longer enough, with her hands, feet, and a big heart, until the air is electric.
Naemi Schmidt-Lauber studied drama in Innsbruck, Hamburg and New York. After 15 years of performing in various theatres across Germany, including in Hamburg, Göttingen, Münster and Jena, she was drawn to Berlin. She has performed at the Sophiensaelen, the Theaterdiscounter and the HAU (Hebbel Am Ufer), devises and produces plays, and has worked as a producing director since 2007.
She undertook training as a storyteller at the Universität der Künste, and has subsequently performed in that capacity at a variety of venues. Aside from the Humboldt Forum, her clients include the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, the Museum für Völkerkunde/ Japanisches Palais in Dresden, the Internationale Literaturfestival Berlin, the Labyrinth Kindermuseum, Grashüpfer Berlin and Theater unterm Dach. She appears as a storyteller in schools in Berlin, and sets up storytelling initiatives, usually in the context of cultural education with children. She also directs the inclusive theatre group Die Grünen Bananen at the berlinerSTARThilfe e.V., an association for the support of disabled people.