Over the last couple of weeks our class has been reading and discussing George Orwell’s timeless classic, ’Animal Farm’.

The novel, first published in 1945, is widely recognized as one of the top 100 English speaking works of fiction of all time. The book tells the story of key figures such as Boxer, Squealer, Snowball, Napoleon and many more animals living under the tyrannical rule of Farmer Jones. The animals rebel and overthrow Farmer Jones and take up the rule of Manor Farm for themselves. At first everything runs smoothly, and the animals are well taken care of and happy. Sadly, things slowly change. Napolean assumes control and, under his dictatorship, the conditions the animals live under are worse than they were under Farmer Jones.

After discussing Animal Farm in class, we began to understand that it´s loosely based on the Russian Revolution. Each character in the book, symbolizes a real-life figure e.g., Napoleon as Joseph Stalin, Mr. Jones as Tsar Nicholas II.

After noticing that there was a theater performance in the next days, we managed to get tickets to watch a one-and-a-half-hour performance from a traveling Irish Anglo-Saxon theater group. Just before entering the Wilhelma Theater, we discussed the final pages and our opinions of the book. Over the course of the play, the five actors showed their brilliance as they embodied the various animal characters, each symbolizing a facet of society regarding the Russian revolution, from the ambitious pigs to the headless chickens.

In conclusion, our visit to the Wilhelma Theater to watch ‘Animal Farm’ was a rich and rewarding experience. It certainly helped bring the book to life. We would like to thank the theater group for their performance and Mrs Herz for the experience to enjoy this play.