Creating a scene - The first EYES Student Teacher Meeting in Tõstamaa, Estonia, November 6 to 12, 2007

In Tõstamaa, Estonia, from November 6th to November 12th, 2007 the first EYES (European Youth Embracing on Stage)-Comenius project meeting took place. 30 students, 16 teachers and three principals from seven schools in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy and Turkey joined in the effort to see this unique and demanding theater project on a good way. ”By creating a theater play together, the goal of EYES is to show the students that despite all its fascinating varieties the European culture and understanding is based on a common set of values and ideas”, Marcus Krettek the project coordinator said. The idea behind the Tõstamaa meeting was that the students write the first act of the play,which is based on the topic ’first love’, together. Later in drama classes in their respective countries they shall add a second act that will reveal the students’ national solution for the dramatic development of the first act. The goal here is to give the students and their audience an understanding of the common validity of love, while at the same time ”adding the spice of cultural diversitiy through the national endings, makes the play fascinating for the audience and achieves the aim of the project as well”, stated Airi Valtonen, a Finnish teacher.

In the inspiring atmosphere of Tõstamaa Keskkool, the students worked on the first act in special work meetings for six days. At the first meeting the teachers gave them the basic outline of the meeting and working structure. From that moment on the students worked independently, only supported and supervised by changing multinational teams of teachers. The creation of the first act was a work in progress that ”was very demanding but was lots of fun,” student Fanny Kulisch said. In the end the act contained a classical misunderstanding and its consequences, best girl friends, gossipping, a typical teacher, a lot about love and a little bit about Shakespeare and Juliet with her Romeo.

At the same time the teachers met in several conferences reaching agreements about the future meeting dates and places, the content and structure of the EYES-webpage and the content of the Göttingen Theater Festival from May 14th to 19th, 2008. ”The meetings are quite intense, but one can get a great deal done in eight hours every day.”, said Mustafa Efe from Turkey. Sponsoring was another main topic in the meetings: How to attract sponsors, what to offer them in exchange for donations.The creation of a project donation leaflet was a central issue here.

Together students and teachers chose an EYES-project logo from 65 designs made by the Estonian, Turkish and Italian students.

Altogether, the meeting took place in a very friendly, open and sometimes festive atmosphere, which was secured by Toomas Mitt, headmaster of Tõstamaa Keskkool and member of the EYES-team. He organized opening ceremonies, playback nights, parties, dinner evenings for the whole group and wonderful outings to the beautiful Estonian countryside and cities like Pärnu or Tallinn. ”My goal was to establish a feeling of friendship and understanding among the team members when organizing the programme here in Tõstamaa.”, Mitt said. He also wanted to ”evoke a feeling for Estonia, its culture and landscape” in the participants, he said. In this he definitely succeded and at the end of the week some tears where shed among the parting members. This shows that with the participants the idea of Comenius to create ”a deeper understanding by establishing new relations and insights into different cultures”, as Krettek put it, was reached.

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