German Summer Festival Theatre (4): An Open-Air “Midsummer Night’s Dream” By The Bremer Shakespeare Company

The bremer shakespeare company was founded in Bremen in 1983 by a collective of nine theatre artists, with the specific intention of creating imaginatively new productions of predominantly Shakespeare’s work. They shared the functions of actor, director, designer (set, costume and light), dramaturg, and translator, as well as administrative tasks. They caused quite a stir in the world of academic Shakespeare studies: bsc were invited to present their production of The Taming of the Shrew at the annual Shakespeare conference of the West German Shakespeare Association in 1985, followed in 1987 by Othello.

While the bsc initially worked from the building of the former Kammerspiele in Bremen (1985-1988), they have had their own home in the since refurbished assembly hall of a secondary school. The extent to which the theatre has become an established component part in the culture of Bremen is demonstrated by the renaming of the tram stop nearby from “Leibnizplatz” to “Theater am Leibnizplatz” in 1999. They tend to maintain their productions in their repertory for a long time and may well present six or seven different plays by Shakespeare, as well as productions by other dramatists, within a month.

Since 1996, they have presented a selection of their repertory annually on a makeshift stage set up for the festival outdoors on an idyllic meadow in the middle of the municipal park, usually towards the end of August, when at least the main municipal theatre (Theater Bremen) was not back yet from its customary summer break. The area is well managed overall, with box office, merchandise stand, drinks trailer, food line with a choice of snacks (grilled sausage, rosemary potatoes with cream cheese and herbs, or grilled vegetables with a selection of dips to choose from), and WC. There are seats for some 500 spectators; a small number of those are under a marquee, while the majority of spectators as well as the stage are not protected from occasional rain. The grounds open about an hour before the performance begins and the actors join front of house colleagues to sell programme notes and chat with the audience.

The bsc production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first staged on the bsc’s main stage in February 2025, both in the English original, as has been the bsc’s practice since its launch, and in German, in a translation created for the company back in 1993 by Reiner Iwersen. He had been a founding member of the company and translated many of Shakespeare’s plays for it. The 2025 production staged the play with a cast of four actors. Tim Lee played Oberon, Theseus, Demetrius, and Snug. Svea Auerbach played Hippolyta, Titania, Helena, and Quince. Simon Elias played Lysander, Egeus, and Bottom, and Magdalena Julia Simmel played Hermia, Puck, and Starveling.

They shifted between characters smoothly and efficiently, mainly in full view of the audience, with the use of one or two pieces of significant and thus easily identifiable costume to create the respective identities.

The set was simple but imaginative, with fruit and vegetable crates known from farmers markets as the main building blocks, which the actors shifted around swiftly and well-choreographed within scenes and during obvious scene changes. They used them to create different playing levels, landscapes, obstacles, or tree shapes.

The company’s nature and spirit were reflected in the multi-casting, the ease of shifting between characters, the playful use of the set, the great fun the performers and all front-of-house colleagues were obviously having across the evening, never emphasising the hard work involved in what we encountered. The immaculately playful and witty use of language contributed considerably to this overall impact. Without exception, every word the actors uttered on stage demonstrated their exceptionally high level of familiarity with the text, both in English and in German, their ease with the contents and their relish in speaking the verse.

I will be writing in due course about their work in their own theatre.