Drachenwald Theatre Guild

This weekend was a wonderful blend of fighting, feasting and theatre.

The Theatre Guild can celebrate that we got five new members! They all participated in Astridh Torkilsdotter´s workshop “a play with words”, which turned out to be a huge success. Hopefully we will get a full report of the workshop by Astrid in the near future.

The result of the workshop was that we all made a performance at the banquet. We performed the ingredients of a chocolate bar with orange flavour. The king and queen said they were amused.

Because the new members got up and performed in front of all of the crowns and the populace at the banquet, they immediately got the status of apprentice. Yay for the brave new members!

Later we also got to see the performance of Astridh´s poem of true love and resourcefulness which you all can read here. The poem and the workshop was both a part in her masters’ test for the Theatre Guild

//Ingrid Audardotter

This years Gourmet Feast had the theme carnival and offered us a lot of beutiful carnival-masks. We also hade the privilege to be entertained of some Commedia dell´Arte performances which amused us all a lot. Lovely to watch and several participated in the plays.

// Wilda Frejasdottir

Lantgraf Hartman Rogges and Vicountess Filippa Birgersdotters Theatre Companys first anniversary weekend at the Styringheim Lucia feast January 9^th thru 11^th 2011.

Despite heavy winds and a treacherous sea two of the Guild Elders, Ragnhild Leifsdotter and Styrbjörn Bärsärk, and one of our patrons Hartman Rogge, made it safely over from the Nordmark mainland to the Barony of Styringheim, the chalky island in the Baltic. Unfortunately our third Elder, Lady Ingrid Audardotter, and our other patron, Vicountess Filippa Birgersdotter, could not attend which grieved us greatly.

The Theatre Guild was officially formed at this particular place, under the pear tree on the Chapter House courtyard in Visby, exactly one year ago. We therefore thought it suitable to return to this place for our first anniversary. The weekend was eventful throughout and we were privileged to have King Lief, Queen Morrigan, Crown prince Sven, Crown princess Siobhan and of course the Baron Jorulf and Baroness Märta of Styringheim attend the event. Since the schedule was packed with lectures, ghost walks, baronial investiture, banquet and more (!) we did not hold a Theatre Guild meeting, but our oldest Elder Styrbjörn did a smashing performance of an improvised “Talk to the woman” during the banquet. There was a lot of blushing, giggling and maybe even a tear or two from both high and low in the hall at his speech.

And this marked the first anniversary of Lantgraf Hartman Rogges and Vicountess Filippa Birgersdotters Theatre Company in Drachenwald. We hope for many more anniversaries and stunning performances from our talented members over the years to come!

//Lady Ragnhild Leifsdotter – Guild Elder

For a long time I haven’t written here and lots have happened. This year the guild elders all went to Medieval week in Styringheim. The Medieval week is a big festival for all in the town of Wisby, Gotland. Wisby is a preserved medieval town with a fantastic wall around. The whole town “celebrates” the year of 1361 and the historic fact of that time. This year it was 650 years since the big battle of Wisby. A big reenactment battle at the site was put on for all tourists to see.

The guild elders had two official workshops booked at the Kapitelhus-gården(loosely translated Chapter house) in the middle of Wisby, a medieval house from around 1200s. The workshops were open for the public but unfortunately they were not announced in time, so only a few came. At Monday we held the workshop “Fight and die like Shakespeare” and two youths came. At Thursday we held the workshop “Mad and in love like Shakespeare” and a mother and here daughter came. Both workshops were a success for those who participated but I would have been nice if there had been more participants.

During the week we also had a guild meeting In Styringheims tent camp outside the town. It was a very nice meeting where we read a play of baron Agilmar out loud. We laughed a lot and applauded the baron’s skills of writing afterwards best diet pills for women.

We also had the time to go to a theatre performance at Roma, an old monastery ruin from the 1100s where they played Shakespeare’s “Twelfth night”.

In conclusion we all had a wonderful week.

// Ingrid Audardotter, Elder

Hello everyone!

Since I wrote last the Guild has been visiting the event “Double Wars XXIV” at the beautiful shire of Attemark in Nordmark. As usual, it was a splendid event! 10 days (27/5-5/6-2011) in the medieval era with good fun and lots of friends. This year we were over 250 people in the camp and 47 of these were children under the age of 12! The Guild Elders had a plan for this event to be a starting point to spread the word about the guild over the whole kingdom of Drachenwald. Therefore the guild had planned quite many workshops and happenings.

We started at the events second day (Saturday 28 May) with bedtime stories for children at seven a ´clock in the evening. The story this first Saturday was read by Ragnhild one of the Guilds Elders. She read the story “Allra käraste syster” by the author Astrid Lindgren. Also one of the kids had a story bag with the story “Little Red Riding Hood” which contained puppets of the main characters in the story. This story became the second story every night. Each storyteller each evening told this story in their own way. We had prepared stories in English too, but during the week no English speaking kids participated in our story hour.  Hopefully, there will be some English speaking kids joining us the next time. This first evening these participated in bedtime story time: Ragnhild, Ingrid, Alexandra, Arina, Martin/Martinos, Rickard/Richardos, Tina, Yrsa, Mickell, Emma, Lovisa, Lukas/Trim Drakhuvud, Linnea, Elin, Vincent, Siri, Elvira, Tuva, Idun

At Sunday the guild had the first workshop in improvisational theatre. The workshop was held by all of the guilds elders (Ingrid, Ragnhild and Styrbjörn). At the workshop, we worked with scenes without a lot of speaking and started it off with some name games to get to know each other. Then we improvised in several scenes with only a line for each actor or even only one line for the whole scene. Attending the workshop was: Ingrid Audardotter, Ragnhild Leifsdotter, Styrbjörn Bärsärk, Eskil Bonde, Wilhelm der Trunkenbold, Agelmar von Sevelingen, Arina Nilsson and Tove Nilsson. Sunday’s bedtime story was read by Eskil Bonde who read the story “Pannkakstårtan” by the author Sven Nordqvist. And of course, he told his version of “The Little Red Riding Hood” with the children acting with the puppets. Attending the bedtime story: Eskil, Ingrid, Ragnhild, Idun, Tindra, Tuva, Linnea, Lovisa, Elina, Kristina, Lukas, Arina, Tove and Yrsa

At Monday the guild had another workshop in improvisational theatre and also this time all three guild elders led the workshop. This time the focus was scenes in gibberish after the first warm-up and getting to know each other exercises. The funny thing is that we all had our special words in gibberish. Agilmar had the funniest and he was also the one who used his word the most. So from now one, he is known as Agilmar “Humpa” von Sevelingen. Participants at the workshop where: Ingrid Audardotter, Ragnhild Leifsdotter, Styrbjörn Bärsärk, Tove Nilsson, Wilhelm der Trunkenbold, Arina Nilsson, Agilmar “Humpa” von Sevelingen, Astridh Thorkilsdotter. At the evening Ingrid read “Pojken, Trollen and Äventyret” a classic saga and listened did: Yrsa, Alexandra, Tuva, Tove, Tindra, Lovisa, Linnea Replica Handbags, Elida, Rikard and Arina.

At Thuesday the guild elder Styrbjörn held a workshop about Stage Fighting. Participated did: Styrbjörn Bärsärk, Ragnhild Leifsdotter, Arina Nilsson, Tuva Nilsson, and John Smith. At the evening Elsa Snakenborg read “Det hemska spökhuset” by Kicki Stidh and Eva Eriksson and listened did: Ingrid, Siri, Kristina, Felix, Alexandra, Yrsa and Elida.

At Wednesday evening Arina and Tove read “Pippi Långstrump”, “Det bidde inget” and “Vem ska trösta knyttet” and listened did: Ingrid, Siri, Alexandra, Yrsa, Linus, Elida, Tuva and Tindra. Later that evening the guild performed at the Brewers guild meeting. First, we performed a short improvised sketch about a guest at a pub. Styrbjörn got the part of bar wrench, Ragnhild as the bar manager, Ingrid as the beer and Agilmar as the drunken customer. Then Wilhelm sang the Philosophers song (from Monty Python) and Eskil told the tale about how Gotland was discovered and Astridh told the tales of the simple joys of maidenhood.

At Thursday afternoon the guild held its meeting. We talked about what we want to do and a bit of background story to the guilds funding. Late that night the guild helped the prince and princess of Nordmark to tell the story of how the Knäckebröds war started. The guild took some artistic freedom with the story and this year the sons became daughters. After the story was told the prince and princess of Nordmark gave their blessing to the guild elders and acknowledged them as being masters of the guild.

At Friday evening Styrbjörn told the story “När Hemulen skulle städa sin frimärkssamling” by showing the tattooed story on Ragnhilds leg, and listened did: Ingrid, Tuva, Idu, Tove, Emma, Alexandra, Arina, Tina, Etta and Eskil. The funniest thing with this story was that Styrbjörn tried to tell it with a Finnish accent in Swedish. But he slipped and told most of it in an accent from the region of Värmland in Sweden. The kids enjoyed the story and the grownups enjoyed the peculiar accent.

At Saturday evening Nicole read the story “När trollmor skötte kungens storbyk” and old classic saga. And listened did: Ingrid, Tuva, Alexandra, Felix, Fredrik, Linus and Elsa.

buy it The Guild concludes its stay at Double Wars as a very successful stay. New members, fun workshops, wonderful story moments with the kids and glorious performances.

// Ingrid Audardotter

Aros event “Spring Swords and Bucklers Champion” was visited by the Theatre Guild this weekend, 8-10 April. A fantastic new event with a lot of fighting, good food and also a lot of Arts and Scien

The Theatre Guild held a small theatre workshop for children, a theatre workshop & a guild meeting. In the theatre workshop for children we created two tales: The main story was “The forgetful bear in the castle” and a quick improvised story about “The magic flowers“.

The magic flowers story was about a magical flower that was alive and could talk. One day she came into a magical place with paintings from the four seasons. She jumped into the painting of winter… But when she got in there she froze and because flowers cannot live in snow, she jumped out again. She was looking rather quickly up the painting with summer and jumped into it and there she was so happy that she did her magic jumping dance. The End!

The forgetful bear in the castle was about a bear that lived in a castle best weight loss supplement. To the palace came one day a little girl. She was frightened by the bear and found a grave. At the grave she found a treasure map that said that in the tomb was a treasure. The girl began to dig and at the same time a witch came with their boat to retrieve her treasure. When she saw that the girl dug up the treasure she became angry and gave the girl a magic potion. When the girl drank the drink, she transformed into an apple. Then came the bear and ate the apple and the witch was happy and danced away with the treasure. The End!

The Theatre workshop included for example: impulses, coordination, gifts, centipedes and pyromaniac tales. Did you think that sounded intriguing? Be sure to attend the next class. 😉

After the workshop, we had a very productive guild meeting where a lot of plans were discussed. This bodes well for the future! 🙂

We talked about that the Guild now will submit their coat of arms for approval. All guild members were encouraged to make pennants or flags etc. with our arms and perhaps see if they have clothes in black and white, to use when acting with the Guild. For more information about what was said during the meeting can be found in Report VI.

// Lady Ingrid Audardotter