Plays and Company

   Since 2000 we have staged a Shakespeare play in English every year and had much fun doing so.

   Beginning with comedies, like A Midsummer Night's Dream (2001), Twelfth Night (2002), Much Ado About Nothing (2003), The Merry Wives of Windsor (2004), As You Like It (2005), The Comedy of Errors (2008), The Taming of the Shrew (2009) and Love's Labour's Lost (2010), we then tried our hand at the romances.

   Shakespeare last plays, Pericles (2011), The Tempest (a musical, 2007), The Winter's Tale (2006) and Cymbeline (2019) were also performed by us.

   When staging Hamlet in 2012 we attempted a tragedy for the first time, and in 2013 we did Romeo and Juliet with a large cast and rowdy street scenes, with dances and fights.

   Our first history play with the 'bottled spider' Richard III (2014) was followed by three problem plays, Measure for Measure in 2015, All's Well that Ends Well in 2016 and The Merchant of Venice in 2017, which deal with a social or ethical dilemma.

   In 2018, our Macbeth went on tour to play at the Collegium Polonicum, an institute of the Europa-Universität Viadrina (Frankfurt-Oder/Slubice).

 

   Please have a look at the German pages for the individual plays, the performers and crew, photos, posters and reviews (partly in English).

   Have a look at our design pages, where you will find a choice of scene sets, props and costumes.

   For our Shakespeare Gala Best of the Bard in 2020 we put together our favourite scenes from the plays we did and wrote new ones as well. Many former players joined us in a three-hour performance with music, dance, stage fights and gripping drama.

 

   From 2021 on, a smaller troupe has continued the Shakespeare tradition at our school.

THE MAIN CREW

DIRECTOR

 

Martina Baasner

 

or 'Berlin's resident Shakespeare enthusiast' founded the Shakespeare Players and has directed them since 2000.

   Now retired, she taught English and French and was the Head of Department for Modern Languages at Friedrich Ebert School. She also trained future drama teachers in a two-year course.

 

   She has written more than 15 publications on Shakespeare for Germany's most prominent publishing house, Cornelsen Verlag.
For the series Film Studies it was The Merchant of Venice (now out of print). In June 2012 in the series Schwerpunktthema Abitur Englisch passages of the play were published, together with Peter Baasner.

In 2017 they wrote two more titles: the annotated text for the Merchant for students and teacher materials.

In 2018, three books on Othello (again for students and teachers) were released, as well as an interpretation for students. More titles on Richard III were published in 2019 and 2020 in addition to four titles on Hamlet in 2021 and A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2023.

 

   Cornelsen's latest textbook for secondary students, CONTEXT from 2022, contains two of her digital chapters on 'Shakespeare' and 'Speaking of English'.

 

   Teachers interested in workshops for English or drama students can book workshops or CPDs.  

 

LANGUAGE COACH and PROMPT

 

 

 

Peter Baasner
 

is a former teacher of English and German and responsible for our language work with the pupils. He focuses on English pronunciation, the correct meter (Iambic pentameter) and the voice training of the actors.

 

   During performances he prompts and also makes an appearance on stage, e.g. as Prospero in The Tempest, as Vincentio in The Taming of the Shrew, Time in The Winter's Tale and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

 

   He also writes additional texts in modern English for performances (e.g. John Gower's lines in Pericles) and song lyrics for very different situations like Let's Get Fruity for the prostitutes' dance in Measure for Measure, the Farewell Song in Love's Labour's Lost, Bertram's Song in All's Well that Ends Well and The Soldier's Song in Richard III.

 

   'Our' Ensemble song about the theatre and its effect was written by him, too.