Last night the class went to see an open-air theater production of the story of William Tell. Most people know William Tell as the gy who shot the apple off of someone’s head, but in Switzerland there is a whole narrative around it about how William Tell started the revolution that eventually founded Switzerland, so he is a hero.

Basically the (brief) story is: Austria invades Switzerland and takes over William Tell’s village. The leader of the army puts his hat on a pole in the middle of the town square and everyone must bow before it when they walk by. William Tell does not and his punishment is to shoot an apple off his son’s head from some ridiculous distance. So William Tell grabs 2 arrows, shoots, and hits the apple straight on (what they didn’t know was that he was an expert marksman). When the commander asks why Tell brought 2 arrows, Tell says it was to shoot the commander if he accidentally killed his son. Outraged, the commander puts him on a ship to an Austrian jail, but Tell escapes and when the commander comes looking for him, Tell shoots him dead with the second arrow. This act of rebellion inspires the country to rise up an form the nation of Switzerland.

It’s all fictional, of course, but apparently there is a good part of Switzerland who refuses to believe that and still hails William Tell as the real founder of the country.

Anyway, the play was amazing, even though I couldn’t understand it as it was all in Swiss German. Just the open-air theater was great, with the reconstructed buildings and the hundreds of actors using this huge set. It was also notable that the entire time the play was going on, it was POURING rain outside. And they still did the whole thing like it was a clear, warm day.

I have some pictures, although since flash photography was a no-no, they are all blurry. Here are the best few: