Deutsche Wanderbühne (German Travelling Theatres) is the term for roving German-speaking, theatrical troupes or travelling operas, consisting of professional actors and musicians. They were financially independent but did not have their own fixed stage.
Such travelling troupes in Germany had, since the 17th century, developed themselves in opposition to the German Princely Court Theatres (Hoftheatern). They entertained the people with farces, theatrical travesties and parodies of the courtly tragedies and operas. Their productions followed a particular structure known as Haupt- und Staatsaktion, which featured one larger ‘main’ production alongside several smaller skits and more improvised acts – the content often included political content, relating to affairs of state. With the rise of the first national theatres in Germany, these forms of drama gradually became less significant in the 18th century – even though Wanderbühne were visiting German towns until well into the 19th century.
The organisation of a Wanderbühne
The organisation of Deutsche Wanderbühne remained roughly the same from the 17th to the 19th century. The travelling actors came together within the structures of so-called dramatic or acting societies – in essence, these were mostly family businesses under the leadership of a Prinzipal. This theatrical business was the organisational and artistic driver of these privately led troupes. They also usually provided the necessary licences, financial backing, props and costumes.
The Prinzipal made decisions on the engagement of new or additional actors. Furthermore, he took care of discipline; managed the financial income and outgoings; chose and edited the new plays; and devised the programme and staging locations. In certain circumstances, Deutsche Wanderbühne had a ‘Theatre Master’ for special areas of expertise, such as set-design, special effects or the organisation of the technical processes. When this was not the case, the Prinzipal would take responsibility for these matters in addition to his usual tasks such as: assigning roles, leading rehearsals and overseeing the theatrical business. For required orchestral elements of performances, an ensemble local to the performance location would normally be contracted in. At that time, there was not yet a director in the modern sense of the word. However, a ballet master was required for tableaux vivants.
Actors learned their trade predominantly within dance training. Friedrich Ludwig Schröder started his career as a ‘Tumbler’. Joseph Anton Christ also proudly reported that he had performed ballet. Furthermore, a training in singing was also part of the actor’s skill-set, as they were required to perform a form of German musical theatre known as Singspiele (comparable to early opera).
The Prinzipal was also the one who possessed the requisite performance licences from the respective provincial Lords; at that time, without such permissions, travelling theatre troupes were not allowed to perform within Germanic territories. Princes would bestow these privileges upon their favoured acting groups. It was customary that they made appearances at court theatres and that they were also given the title of a court’s official acting troupe.
The theatrical troupe would normally make guest appearances as part of tournaments taking place at localities within their allocated performance territories. In small towns, performances were mostly carried out as open-air theatre on wooden stages at marketplaces or squares. Whilst in bigger areas it was possible to perform in purpose-built showing booths – known as Schaubuden – at guest-houses, barns and other similar locations. If the troupe performed in one fixed building, the Prinzipal held a lease at his own risk. There were only ever artistic directors at the larger court theatres, and directors appointed by civic authorities or organisations only became customary for the first time in the 19th century.
Because only a small number of troupes were given performance rights within a territory, there was hard-fought competition between theatrical groups. This led to the poaching of the opposition's popular and well-known acting talents. Troupes that did not receive performance rights had to spread out to new areas, which led to the Wanderbühne reaching far into Russia and into Baltic regions where parts of the population spoke German.
The production programme of a Wanderbühne
The private travelling theatrical troupes oriented their programme of productions almost exclusively towards an often uneducated public who were seeking humorous entertainment; these Wanderbühne were dependent upon the donations and entrance fees paid by such audiences. In order to ensure that they did not lose the public's interest, theatre troupes had to regularly perform new plays. This meant that poetic patterning was only roughly adhered to – or in some cases it was completely left out and the actors improvised. This was because there was not sufficient time to constantly study new plays in depth.
Theatre in the Wanderbühne was primarily concerned with pure entertainment and amusement. The programme was dominated by the aforementioned Haupt- und Staatsaktion forms. They centred around innuendos, bawdy jokes and farcical interludes involving Harlequin or Hanswurst characters. The performances consisted of a sequence of action-packed individual acts, which sometimes involved aspects of situational comedy. These acts were made into a spectacle in which the visual effects of lavish costumes, grandiose sets and attention-grabbing special-effects were considered to be more important than the quality of the acting. This was partly because, during that period, a completely different understanding of art was dominant and the role of acting tended to be seen as the work of a tradesman or craftsman.
It was customary that actors were proficient in the puppet-show, because restricted space often didn’t allow for them to perform on a bigger stage. Therefore, puppet-shows were part of the ‘bad-weather programme’.
In keeping with the English and Italian models of travelling theatre, the Wanderbühne practised a form of improvised drama, in which the style of delivery was shaped improvisations, type-cast roles and realistic clarity. The actors specialised in playing particular types of role or even fixed roles – parts that would appear again and again, which fitted best with the actors’ gender, age and appearance. Those that were able to provide the clearest embodiment of characters by over-acting, were often considered to be the best actors.
Interaction between individual players did not exist in the modern sense, due to the fact that the actors took over studying for the part, the often over-the-top costumes (the Prinzipal provided them with what was known as ‘costume money’) and competed to win the approval of the public. In this way the directorial duties of the Prinzipal were limited to allocating the actors with roles, and ensuring that they were positioned on-stage in the correct relation to one another.
The unique form of Wanderoper or ‘Travelling Opera’ One unique form of theatre performed during the 18th century was the ‘Travelling Opera’ or Wanderoper. It was performed in the German court theatres as well as on the travelling stages of the Wanderbühne. In addition to the singers, the Wanderoper had additional instrumentalists, whose instruments, music and music-stands had to be carried by the troupe – unless musicians local to the particular destinations were used instead. This theatre-form also required intensive preparation and a musical director. Improvisation did not always exist as it did in the theatrical acts. In the intervals, however, entertainers, such as rope dancers, also made appearances. As from the middle of the century, the emphasis on Italian opera reverted to the German courts, a bourgeois interest in ‘singing and light operas’ arose. Following the style of the famous Italian wanderers such as those of the Girolamo Bon, German operatic groups arose, working as entrepreneurial businesses. These include the troupes of Johann Friedrich Schönemann (1704–1782), Abel Seyler (1730–1800) with the Seyler Theatre Company (founded 1769) and Emanuel Schikaneder (1751–1812). These theatrical ensembles had both musical and spoken theatre in their repertoires. Wilhelm Pfannkuch: Organisationen der Musik.
Historical development
Middle Ages and Renaissance The theatrical landscape of the German-speaking regions in the middle-ages and the Renaissance period was characterised by religiously motivated spiritual performances, which were originally directed or led by clergy, and later also used as representations of civic service in the Middle Ages. The purpose of Mystery and Passion Play, Fastnachtspiele, or the Jesuit and the Protestant school of scholarship lay above all in the conversion, the instruction and the moral education of society. These performances were often assisted by many citizens who were highly regarded as amateur actors. The German amateur-theatres enjoyed great popularity and remained long after the end of their prominence, even though they lost importance with the emergence of the first foreign travelling theatrical groups.
The first Italian acting troupes moved across the Alps at the end of the fifteenth century, but played primarily in aristocratic circles, in which the Italian was powerful. With the development of Italian opera as the most popular form of theatre at the European courts after 1600, many of the Italian comedy groups in the German region saw themselves forced to open up to new audiences because they could not compete with this new form of musical theatre. Thus, they turned to the German middle class, which, however, did not understand Italian. The Commedia dell'arte performances of the Italian theatre groups developed into a sort of pantomime whose comic action was mediated by masks and exaggerated gestures and movement.
By the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English comedians of the Elizabethan Theatre moved across Denmark and the Netherlands into the German-speaking areas. As a result, there was a struggle between these and the Italian theatre groups for the attention of the German public, which was complicated by the arrival of French troupes in the 18th century.
The beginnings of independence In the 17th century, in the German-speaking world, a German professional theatre was formed in response to the foreign theatrical groups. This development began with the inclusion of German actors in the ensembles of English troupes, which gradually led to purely German-speaking travelling theatrical groups.
From the English models, the texts were taken as the basis for performances, in which elements of the Commedia dell'arte were also added. Thus, at Wanderbühne, a unique form of comedy appeared. The German-speaking counterpart to Pickelhering or Arlecchino was the comic figure of the Viennese Hanswurst, created by Stranitzky, who appeared as an added servant figure in transposed and strongly coarsened versions of French or Italian tragedies, which served as a template for his jokes.
In addition to the troupes that offered stories and tales of adventure to the general public, theatre groups were also formed that played at the princely courts and before the educated public. One example of this was the Hochdeutsche Hofcomödianten and their successor groups, which brought important innovations in the landscape of the Wanderbühne: longer, more literarily elaborate plays, dramas and female actors for women's roles. In addition to adaptations of English, Italian and French materials (such as Shakespeare and Molière), German materials for plays were also used.
Enlightenment