Märchenwald
At about 10:15 p.m., after a day packed with camp activities, a group of 30 villagers walks silently to the edge of the woods and blows a horn to call spirits from the forest. A figure in a hooded cloak meets the group. It stands there silently until the group quiets down. Its message is clear: do not bring your flashlights into the woods, do not speak. Hold hands and DO NOT wander from this path. The price you pay may be your life.
Not that anyone would want to go traipsing off at this time of night. Villagers who have never been outside of the city often marvel at just how dark it gets at night at Waldsee, the German language and cultural immersion camp near Bemidji, Minn. When the sun sets in this part of Minnesota's North Woods, the forests turn into a dark haven for beings transported out of a book of fairy tales.
The villagers carefully find their way down a path, through the woods and towards the lake, holding hands the whole way down, stepping over fallen limbs and swatting leaves away. After about 10 minutes the path opens up into a wooded clearing where five masked figures holding torches await them. They chant a song as the villagers take their seats.
"It's ten o'clock, time to turn down the lights..." they chant, much as a town crier would have chanted in the Middle Ages.
As many as 20 villagers at a time live out fairy tales at this secret location in the woods. Märchenwald, or "fairy tale forest," is a theater-based medieval program that runs concurrently with the other programs at the German camp. The program gives villagers a chance to live out life in the Middle Ages through activities such as fencing, calligraphy, leather stamping, heralding, cooking and storytelling.
"Märchenwald is all about the creativity," said Waldsee counselor Ellen Frierson, who has been involved with the program since her first year as a camper in 1994. "It helps kids to see another part of history and it opens their minds to other ways of thinking."
The program draws kids who are interested in theater and acting, but also attracts medieval history buffs and kids who like role-playing and strategy games.
Märchenwald participants get used to taking on new identities and acting out new characters. On top of their new Waldsee Village names, they also become their own Märchenwald character with their own legend and back story. They become knights after they have proven themselves worthy by exhibiting the five main tenets of the program: strength, intelligence, bravery, loyalty, and nobility.
"My Märchenwald character, Clymke, was a hunter the first year I was in the program," said Hans-Jörg, 17, of the character he performs in the play. Hans-Jörg has been in the Märchenwald program for the past three summers. "But he's evolved over the years. First he wanted to kill the king, but now I'm a family man."
Like all of Waldsee's adventure programs, Märchenwald also teaches kids German vocabulary they wouldn't necessarily learn elsewhere: words like Mut, which means "courage."
The culminating moment of the program is the late-night play they perform for other villagers at Waldsee. Märchenwald villagers learn what legend they will stage on a Tuesday and then have four days to study the story, build the characters, and create the scenes.
The story they are performing this time around is the Arthurian legend of Balan, a loyal, well-meaning, and utterly idiotic knight who wreaks unintentional havoc on those around him and often mistakes his brother Balin for an enemy.
"Balan's the smarter of the two, maybe a little bit wiser," said Hans-Jörg.
The bare structure of the story is there - but the villagers involved in Märchenwald are directly involved in changing elements of it for maximum dramatic and comedic effect.
"They all know the story, but what they create out of it is just mind-boggling," Ellen said.
At the end of the play's last scene, as Balan and Balin fall into each others' swords in one final feat of mutual idiocy, the audience erupts into laughter. The six figures then quickly take up their positions on the secret stage, put on their masks, and raise their torches again to sing one last parting song as the theater-goers fumble their way back up the hill through the dark of night to their cabins.
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