National Theater

So before watching the ballet, we got to go on a behind the stage tour of the National Theater. The National Theater in Mannheim actually consists of several buildings--admin, plastics, etc, as well as the 3 main stages--ballet, opera, and theater. Isa, one of the people who work at the Winter Academy, works during the year as a tour guide at the National Theater, so she took us around.

There were multiple workshops. I didn't take pictures of them all because some people were still working (although it was almost 7 o'clock). They had carpentry workshops, plastics workshops, and workshops for painting scenery and staining furniture. This first workshop was the upholstery workshop.

The hall ways were huge (and the elevator was as big as our kitchen). Here's one random plastic chair that was chilling in the hallway.

There is also some of the older costumes still stored in this building. Everything is stored by the time period of the costume...all I know is Ms. Denise would love this closet!

(And they had Big Bird here too...why, I don't know)

After going through that building, we went to the main building, with the "bunker." This was an old dance practice studio. Now they have more studios (and bigger ones) at a different location, but it's still sometimes used as a warm up space.

These bunkers were used during WWII (as bunkers of course) and afterwards were used for student housing. Nowadays, they are just used for storage of old props...but it was definitely fun to see some of the props!

The ballet Stage

Then after the tour we waited for the show to start here. It was strange because they didn't start letting us in until 10 minutes before showtime. The show was good, but very long. It was 90 minutes, "kein Pause" no pause. So overall not the best modern ballet I've seen, but definitely a good value for the price of 10e!