WILLI THOMCZYK | DIE NACHT DES HUHNS | A one-man music show

Ladies and Gentlemen. Gentlemen,

We present at Sunday, 27.11.2011 at 6 pm in the gallery rooms, the reading of and with Willi Thomczyk, He reads, sings and cooks.
For this special event, there is only 50 seats and we ask if you are interested to register by mail or telephone.
The places cost 20 euros per person, with soup! You pay your tickets on the evening of the event.

Willi Thomczyk presents excerpts from his novel “The Night of the Chicken” and his own German / English songs for the guitar. And anyone who knows Thomczyk knows that he has mastered improvisation with the audience. A folk actor who does not mince words. He blasphemes about those up there as mercilessly as he does about those down there. He does not spare himself either. Thomczyk is now on his way from angry young man to an angry old man. Still the rascal in your neck and a wink: “To be hated for what you are, rather than to be loved for what you are not.”

Thomczyk is known to the public as a film and television actor. Whether as Camper Benno in the RTL series “The Campers” or Polier Horst in the movie “What does not fit is made fitting”, he always convinces as a “man from the people”. No wonder he grew up in an Upper Silesian mining family in the Ruhr area and still lives there. Only a few know Willi Thomczyk as a painter, musician and dramatist awarded with literary prizes, including the 2nd prize at the NRW Autorentreffen, Cologne-Bonn; the Hamburg Dramatist Prize of the Volksbühne and the promotional prize of the Art and Culture Foundation of the State of NRW.

The Night of the Chicken - That's What It's About
The novel is set in a mine colony in the 1960s and deals with the relationship between a 17-year-old boy and the old miner Viktor Kalischewski – called Kalli for short. The novel is both an ode to friendship and a look at the decline of mining culture. What makes him special as a Ruhr area novel is his non-folkloristic view of the Ruhr area as a bulwark of reconstruction after the war. Such a thing is rare in the literature of the West, which presented e in the 2010 Capital of Culture year without content and without Belang Ruhrkultur. Thomczyk’s novel is not counted as a cross. „His Ruhr area lies behind the colourful facades of the Capital of Culture advertising. Not only the “lucky on”, but also the “lucky off” describes the author simply, clearly and without nostalgia. But those who know the author know that the funny and tragic are closely linked to him, and his romantic outlook into the future combines sadness with beauty. Whether educational, rogue or social novel - one thing is the novel by no means: unpoetic and boring!

“Anyone who wants to learn about the Ruhr area should read this book”
The magazine Theater Pur 7/8 2010 recommends: Anyone who has met Willi Thomczyk knows that his language is direct, straightforward and sometimes harsh. So this novel is a long farewell - certainly hard and realistic, but also comical and full of poetry. Anyone who wants to learn about the Ruhr area should read this book.

Alfred Miersch (Nordpark Verlag)
I was torn, dressed and repelled. Attracted by the power and yes, the poetry in the pictures, repelled by the juice and hardness, the cold of situations and the coolness of this world. And yet, it is literature, whether or not brimming with beauty, and it is literature because it is crude as life, cold as fate, and time and again with moments of tranquility, peace, a happy moment that can brighten the merciless world a little.


von fraunberg art gallery
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