 | Peter De Geesewell aka Peter R. Füeg |
I have been using the nom de plume Peter De Geesewell in my artistic work since the publication of my first play in England. My work now includes two full-length plays for adults and several plays for schools, all in English.
In the summer of 2023, I published my German-language debut novel 'Our Ghost Harry'. Originally only intended as a short ghost story for my grandchildren, it eventually became a novel of over two hundred pages for children and adults. The Basel artist and graphic designer Markus Urfer illustrated the story.
I am currently working on the translation of the novel into English.
Education /Profession
After the maturity exam at the Kantonale Handelsschule in Basel, I studied English, German and history at the University of Basel for five years. I then gained a diploma as a secondary school teacher at the Basel Teacher Training College and taught my three subjects at Pratteln Secondary School for more than 40 years from 1979 onwards.
Working with young people between the ages of 12 to 16 years is very demanding, but also highly rewarding. In my many years of teaching, I have worked with hundreds of fantastic, motivated young people. I have stayed in contact with many of them for years - often to this day.
Since retiring, I have been working on my book and other artistic projects. I regularly look after my six grandchildren and am involved in several social institutions (Roman Catholic Parish of Pratteln, Calcutta Project Basel, Theaterverein Basel).
'Artistic' Beginnings
As a boy scout of St. Leodegar Pratteln, I wrote my first sketches and short plays for parents' evenings and parish fêtes.
During this time, I also made two 75-minute feature films:
'Sphärenmusik' (1971), the story of the abduction of a boy scout troop into space
'Unternehmen Bizeps' (1972), a parody of James Bond films
English School Theatre
In 1981, I wanted to put on an English play with my class at the time. The search for a suitable text proved to be difficult. All the plays I found were either too short or too demanding in terms of language. In addition, none of the plays had enough roles for a whole school class. So, I did something I am still ashamed of today: I took an existing play, added some more characters and rewrote it to suit my needs.
The enthusiasm of the students at work and of the audience at the performance were reason enough to also put on English plays with my next classes. But from 1985 onwards, I wrote the plays myself and tried to write the roles to suit my pupils.
The first play I wrote was 'Murder At Pitlochry House', which premiered at a big school party in September 1985.
Over the next twelve years I wrote three more plays:
Murder At The Fancy-Dress Ball (1989)
Murder At The Asylum (1993)
Murder Included (1997)
From 2001 onwards, I took up the old plays in the same order but rewrote them from scratch. For example, the second version of 'Murder At The Fancy-Dress Ball' (2005) no longer had anything to do with the troubles in Northern Ireland, but was about the G8 summit in Edinburgh in 2005, because the terrible attacks on the London Underground happended on the day I started to rework it.
'Murder At The Asylum' also had a completely new cast in 2009. As my students were no longer familiar with Lady Thatcher from the first version, and since there was a very good singer in my class who was confident enough to take on the role, I replaced the Iron Lady with La Diva, a crazy opera singer who can't quite decide whether she is Maria Callas, Cecilia Bartoli or Edita Gruberova.
The theatre projects lasted two weeks each. In the first week we went to a remote camp somewhere in the foothills of the Alps, where we worked exclusively on the text. I often managed to take along some native speakers as language coaches. At this point, the students had only studied English for one year and were now confronted with a language level that was far above their actual level. So, they first had to understand the text and then memorise their role perfectly by the end of the campus week.
In the second week, we worked at school, where the stage design was created under the guidance of the art teacher, and we rehearsed the play on the school stage for the première on Friday and the dernière on Saturday.
An incredible dynamic developed in those projects. We laughed, suffered, cried - and a strong class spirit and unforgettable memories were forged.
Student plays
- Murder At Pitlochry House, 1985/2001/2013
- Murder At The Fancy-Dress Ball, 1989/2005
- Murder At The Asylum, 1993/2009
- Murder Included, 1997 /2016
Full-length plays for adults
After the perfomance of 'Murder At The Asylum' in 1993, an English amateur drama group asked me for the text. But since the play was too short for a full-length production, they ultimately decided not to perform it. .
So, I rewrote the text into a full-lenght play with the same plot. This allowed me to characterise the individual characters in more details and raise the language level.
I found a theatre publishing house in England, New Playwrights’ Network, that published the play in the summer of 1996.
Today the play is available from Cressrelles Publishing Company Limited (https://cressrelles.co.uk).
The second full-length play was written during a sabbatical in 2002 as an entry for the '18th International Playwriting Festival 2003', organised by the Warehouse Theatre in London. I wrote a much enlarged, two-hour version of 'Murder Included', with a new and surprising second ending.
There were 600 entries. As only the best play was awarded a prize, I still do not know whether my play came in 2nd or 600th!
Full lenghts plays
- Murder At The Asylum, 1996
- Murder Included, 2003