While advanced German and the movie The Breakfast Club might not bear an obvious connection, the two are linked in senior Ella Dittmann’s mind. She is one of eight students who participated in the German Kabarett (Cabaret) course this spring, and for her the end of the semester is bittersweet. ”We have people from all over—we’ve got people from STEM, the humanities, actors and people who have never acted before,” she said. “It’s weird, I feel like I’ve never felt this in a class.”
Started by Nikolaus Euba in 2004, for some twenty years the Cabaret course has offered UC Berkeley students taking German the chance to act, sing, and get comfortable in the arts and expression of the language. Their semester culminates in a sequence of public performances; in addition to taking part in the Words in Action series, students put on independent stagings that bring the German department as well as the Bay Area German community together each year.
This year’s performance included Heinz Erhardt’s “Mary und Lisa,” a humorous poem referencing Schiller’s take on the drama between Queens Mary and Elizabeth; "Blau-und Goldkäppchen," a Berkeley take on Little Red Riding Hood; and Karl Valentin’s "Gespräch am Springbrunnen,” a philosophical conversation between strangers that takes place at a town square’s defunct fountain. A reception afterwards was sponsored by the Excelsior German Center.
The numbers selected for performance vary yearly, in part because Euba encourages students to explore a range of genres—including the chance to create their own original compositions—and hone the ones that they find most engaging. They then spend time finding ways to embody the language and transform it into a performance, an aspect of the class that goes beyond traditional study and is meant to connect students to literary texts at a deeper level.
This inherent flexibility is built into the course, meant to guide students towards an experience that blends traditional academic instruction with the dramatic arts. Each class begins with a standing circle where students shake off their day and get warmed up, getting to know each other better through circle shares. By the end they are collectively crouching, warmed up and ready to rehearse.
The class meets in B-4 Dwinelle, where the Berkeley Language Center installed a “black box” theater space in 2016 in response to language instructors’ growing interest in incorporating performing arts into their pedagogical frameworks. Euba along with Italian instructor and Words in Action director Annamaria Bellezza have researched, written and presented on the significance of the dramatic arts in developing students’ linguistic competence as well as confidence. And each year, instructors from more than fifteen languages lead their students onto the Words in Action stage for a multilingual celebration of arts and culture.
Connecting students at a deeper level to the spirit and nuanced meanings of a literary text is particularly important to Euba. “Learners enter into a dialog with the text, develop a sense of how they are written and structured and what specific effect they can have on their readers,” he said. “This teaching model seems to create a particularly strong work ethic and a very high level of motivation while shifting the focus away from the teacher and truly empowering the student.”
Students come to the Cabaret course with a range of backgrounds, both in terms of their study of German and their performing experience. Madison Zaragoza, a double major in Political Science and German and a theater enthusiast, said that the course was a rare opportunity to combine a favorite hobby with her full academic schedule. Her first-year classmate Valentina El Harizi is likewise deeply involved in acting and filmmaking; though she felt less confident in her German skills going into the course, it helped her develop a new dexterity in the language.
For senior Max Hauser on the other hand, performing was entirely new, and has awakened a budding interest in theater more generally. “Before taking this class, I had no real interest in acting at all,” he said. “But I think through the class I learned to love expressing myself in a different way. It’s taught me to be more comfortable with who I am—you’re kind of embracing your weird side. My friends noticed a change in me, I thought that was really cool.”
Sensing some wistfulness that his brief turn at acting might be at an end, Max's classmates chime in, encouraging him to continue post-graduation. Who knows, they joke, this might be the start of something big—for Max, and for future generations of German students at Berkeley.