Thirty-seven Georgia Southern University students will travel to Germany this summer for study and performance opportunities, according to a May 29 announcement. The trip is supported by the Office of Research and Economic Development and the Halle Foundation.
Thirteen theater program students will participate in a five-week study abroad curriculum from Wittenberg to Berlin, focusing on the work of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Theater minor Bella Diaz said, “When you are learning about something that is foreign to you, being able to immerse yourself not just in the culture, but in the people who live that culture, it makes you appreciate it more. Of course, I could never have the full perspective of a native German, but being able to look up from the textbook and think ‘that street sign is in German and those buildings do not look like anything in my hometown,’ I believe that will help me understand the content in a much deeper way than if I was studying it outside the place where it originated.”
Theatre professor Nick Newell said his own international studies shaped him as an artist: “I was very fortunate to have studied Shakespeare in England at Stratford-upon-Avon as an undergrad and (Anton) Chekhov and (Konstantin) Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre School in graduate school. I can say definitively that those experiences helped to shape me as an artist and scholar in a way that never would have been possible through reading about them, because theater is an experiential art.”
Twenty-four students from Georgia Southern’s trumpet ensemble and The Sound ensemble will go on a two-week performance tour with stops including Nuremberg, Halle an der Saale, Detmold, and Munich. Principal Lecturer of Trumpet Tim Kintzinger said performing venues include historic churches older than the United States itself: “Think of a church that is older than your country, and that’s where you are going to be playing. Then our concert in Halle is going to be outdoors during a city festival, so they will be on stage in the town square where the whole town comes together for food and music.”
Jolyon Hughes said grants from both organizations total $100,000 for this year’s trips: “This grant process has allowed us to make quite a few connections in Germany, and we have been able to send many students there. We are also working on faculty exchanges,” Hughes said. “It has really broadened our partnerships with our German and European partner institutions.”
Kintzinger concluded by saying previous participants found their experience transformative: “This is a great experience for them and they cannot know how much they are going to get out of it until they actually do it,” he said. “I just keep telling them, ‘you will come home changed.’”
