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WEINGARTEN – It is not an everyday image that visitors to the Ravensburg Theater are presented with. Not only because the guys from the KBZO construction site bring heavy equipment onto the stage, but also their so-called talkers. Because the young actors Hannes, Silvan, Max, Lukas and Flo do not express their role texts verbally, but via these devices. AAC is the technical term. And as different as the disabilities are, the talker is controlled in different ways to get to the right passage of text: foot, eye, thumb, knee...

Thorsten Mühl from the advice center for supported communication at the KBZO foundation is “excited to see what will go wrong”. Because just before the curtain rises, some things don't work out. His actors are now stage routines. You need the lights, the atmosphere, the audience. And it's slipping. The guys hit their talkers, the assistants have the right timing, the technology works.

As the curtain goes down, the audience is amazed and delighted in equal measure. That's what happened to Alex Niess from the Theater Education Center when Thorsten Mühl asked him about a year ago whether he could imagine realizing a project with students from the KBZO Foundation, who on the one hand are physically handicapped and on the other hand cannot speak. "For me, it's one of the most exciting projects of all," sums up Niess, who "learned a lot" from his protagonists.

Donation from Ravensburger AG
gets the ball rolling

"It wasn't difficult for our charming students to win over Alex," Mühl remembers. In this way, actors and drama teachers quickly became closer. And practiced, practiced, practiced. Two hours every Thursday. With great enthusiasm and even more passion. Then the first performance as part of the cross-school project "Construction Site". "The students from the other schools were enthusiastic about the performance of the KBZO ensemble and showed us great recognition and respect," says Mühl. "This is how a piece of lived inclusion became reality."

A piece that is also worth being “preserved”. And so the KBZO Foundation provided the means and the Ravensburg Theater provided the stage to have the work immortalized in another performance of "Nugat Videoproduktion". "The product will then be visible on the Facebook page of the KBZO foundation, sent to various competitions - and with a bit of luck, our work of art might also win an award," hopes Mühl, who, together with his crew and Alex Niess, is already working on a new, larger piece works: "Confusion on Includia - a piece from another planet". The performance is planned for spring/summer 2015. "We will invite the Ravensburger company and their employees separately, because it was their donation from the bake sale that got the UK theater group rolling in the first place," says Thorsten Mühl.

For the long-standing employee of the KBZO Foundation and experienced communication pedagogue, it was impressive to see what achievements even students with severe, multiple disabilities are capable of: "I have the best job in the world and I am very grateful that the KBZO Foundation and Ravensburger gave me the opportunity to show this work. It was really in the middle instead of on the outside! I am very, very proud of my students.”

Text and photo: KBZO Foundation