vorschlag:hammer – FREDERICK

Instead of working hard in the summer and hoarding food for the winter like the rest of his mouse family, Frederick just collects sunbeams, colors and words. Then, as the long winter presses harder and harder on the mice’s minds, Frederick is able to summon the sunbeams, colors, and words of summer in a grand performance for the others, bringing summer to the mice’s cold den.

In a theatrical experiential laboratory for children ages 4 and up, the things Frederick collects-color, light, words, and sounds-become the subject of participatory installations in which young audiences can learn about, participate in, and consciously perceive these basic elements of theater.

The story, based on the classic children’s book by Leo Lionni, is a parable of the value of artistic work in a working society and of the power of this work to be a beneficial, if not vital, part of that society. Frederick the Mouse allows the theater to be experienced as a place of shared experience and negotiation, giving even the youngest children the opportunity to experience themselves as active and creative spectators who help to stage and create the theater.

A production by vorschlag:hammer in co-production with KOM`MA-Theater Duisburg and Ballhaus Ost Berlin.

Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin, by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen and by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.