The incredibly complete listing of every department and every employee of every German theater has ceased publication. The familiar red cover and black lettering will no longer list every stage hand, secretary , administrator, chorus member, costume designer-past and present-solo singer whether guest or fest,, prompter umsoweiter anew each year in what was known as “Die große Addressebuch’: the Great Address Book.
As thoroughgoing as only Germans could conceive, much less execute, it served as a telephone book, organizational guide, and indispensable tool for many generations working in the German theater system. Published for 115 years by the GDBA=the German Union for Stage/Theater Emloyees, it became too resource intensive for the Union and the theaters to compile and keep up to date in an age where much, but by no means all, of this information can be found on the Web. It will be sorely missed.
New ways to search for jobs and information about German speaking theaters will be discussed soon in an upcoming post, but this marks the end of an era!