GERMANY: DER ZAUBERWALD TOURING COMPANY PERFORM THEIR LATEST HORSE MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT "GOA"

Record ID: 392239

  • Title: GERMANY: DER ZAUBERWALD TOURING COMPANY PERFORM THEIR LATEST HORSE MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT "GOA"
  • Date: 28th October 2001
  • Summary: (REUTERS) (PERFORMANCE CLEARANCE FOR RESALE) VARIOUS, ASSORTED SHOTS OF ACTORS AND HORSES PERFORMING 'GOA'
  • Embargoed: 12th November 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: WÃœRZBURG, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA82RL912IKJAN338UXK86OKUUV
  • Story Text: Der Zauberwald (Magic Forest) is a unique German institution that began just five years ago and has established itself as one of the nation's favourite touring spectacles.
    The show, which is a mixture of musical, theatre and circus, has as its stars dozens of beautiful Arabian, Friesen and Andalusian stallions. The company are currently touring the country presenting their latest musical 'Goa' that tells the traditional story of good and evil and leads the audience through an impressive backdrop of evil wizard's kingdoms, desert, and forest, set in a huge circus tent.
    Der Zauberwald is the vision of two men, Franz Althoff, who comes from one of Germany's most famous circus dynasties and Günther Fröhlich, a man who has spent his life working with horses. Their dream was to devise a musical in which the lead roles were played by some of the most beautiful stallions in the world, including the rare black Friesen stallion, which was saved from the edge of extinction at the beginning of this century. The result is a captivating fairytale in two parts that has charmed the German public for the last five years.
    The show uses over fifty actors and artists including acrobats, clowns, stuntmen and illusionists and up to forty pure bred stallions. In short, it has something for everyone in terms of entertainment.
    "That's the nice thing about Zauberwald; it is a mix, a total mix between, one can say musical, circus, and naturally a horse show. And this combination is naturally the most fascinating aspect, also of course for the audience."
    "It's an absolutely wonderful thing to play in the show, because you have this combination and for the public, if you love musical you come along, if you like circus, we have a combination of circus and then also of course, the horse show, with the horses together. So, for the public, it is obviously something, it is like wow, extreme! Three things in one, yeah."
    The second part of the Zauberwald story, 'Goa', currently touring the country, tells the traditional story of good versus evil amidst a backdrop of songs, circus acts and some spectacular horseback stunts.
    "The first part (of the story) dealt really with the unicorn, and the efforts to stop it dying out, the last unicorn. Now the second part deals with the fact that that the forces of evil want to own the souls of the horses. And through owning these souls, they will also then possess the souls of the humans and goodness will disappear from the world. And the good fairy Angie, together with her friends, travel through time to collect the crystals that will allow them to free the goddess of fantasy from the mists of amnesia and this they do by putting the pieces of crystal together. And this is naturally a very very interesting journey and three or four times better than the first episode."
    The key to the whole show's success is naturally the stallions themselves, but despite their stage experience, things do not always go as planned in the show.
    " With the animals, it makes it interesting, because they are not always the same; yeah, that is the nice thing, because with people, people have their texts, we have our ways where we go and if you are working with animals, sometimes it can change. Sometimes it gets very interesting, because sometimes they do different things and that makes it quite interesting."
    But despite the odd deviation from the plot, 'Der Zauberwald' has certainly became something of a German institution. The current show will be on tour in Germany until the first week of January and there are plans to start touring in Britain in the near future.
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