THOW & SHOW München

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THOW & SHOW München is an amateur theatre group of deaf performers in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Its name stands for Theater ohne Worte (theatre without words) mit Show; the actors perform only in German Sign Language. Founded in 1979, it has appeared at deaf cultural festivals across Europe.

History

The group was founded in Munich in 1979 by Hans Busch, Ferdinand Lochmann and Roland Kühnlein, at first without a name; it made its first official appearance at the World Games for the Deaf in Cologne in 1981 and adopted the name THOW & SHOW München in 1985. In 1987 it made its first film work, the piece Verkehrte Welt, for the deaf television programme Sehen statt Hören. It performed at Munich's Tollwood Festival in 1991 and 1992, and in 1993–94 had its own stage at the former Munich-Riem airport.

From 1997 the group took part in the European cultural festivals of the deaf, among them Brussels (1997), Moscow (1999), Munich (2004), Helsinki (2006), Antwerp (2008), Ljubljana (2010), Tallinn (2012), Vác (2014) and Alghero (2018), as well as in the deaf cultural days in Kiel, Hamburg and Dresden and a theatre festival in Kyiv (2008).

Repertoire

The group performs wordless theatre and sketches in sign language for deaf and hearing audiences, and has toured to Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Cyprus, Belgium and the Netherlands among other countries; in 2017 it performed, for example, in Ferrara, Potsdam, Traunstein, Munich, Zürich and Paris.

Awards

The group received an Alternativer Kulturpreis from the Munich branch of the party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the early 1990s, and the Degeth-Ehrenpreis, awarded for its 30th anniversary.

Organisation

The group is listed as a member group of the Gehörlosenverband München und Umland e. V. (Munich deaf association).