Following its success with “Dining with a Misanthrope”, University of Bremen’s drama group, Theater der Versammlung, is rehearsing its next production: The group invites the audience to come along on a “Country Outing” and to participate in a “Crash course in participatory observation” of the Tschechow crowd. The setting for “Tschechow – A Country Outing” („Tschechow – eine Landpartie“) is an old forester’s lodge in Syker Vorwerk. Following the death of the author Anton Pawlowitsch Tschechow in 1904 his figures live on and wander – unnoticed by the world – as the so-called Tschechow Crowd migrates to Germany shortly before the 1917 Russian Revolution. They settle in the vicinity of Syke, where they live a secluded existence to the present day. The Theater der Versammlung will start in Bremen and embark on a journey of discovery to the Tschechow Crowd.

The participants book an “Introduction to Field Research in Just Three Hours” and travel by bus to Syker Vorwerk, where they will study the strange behavior of the Tschechow figures in the forester’s lodge. They will be accompanied by two expedition leaders who will explain the method of participatory observation during the outward bus journey.

Before entering the lodge the research group will first cautiously observe the figures through the windows. In the four interconnected rooms and the house garden full of felled trees they will then negotiate the ever-changing proximity and distance between the two groups. Results and experiences will be exchanged in the bus on the return journey.

The “performance” starts at 5 p.m. on Friday 2nd September and Saturday 3rd September at 3 p.m. Reservations by e-mail at tdvartprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de. More information (in German, as the performances are in German, too) under http://www.tdv.uni-bremen.de.