Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters.

Macbeth 1,5.

The Berliner Shakespeare Ensemble was founded in Berlin in 2005. It is an Anglo/German theatre company whose aim is to provide the public with exciting interpretations of Shakespeare, in German translation as well as in the original English, using the principles of Rudolf Laban's Movement Psychology.

We feel that too many modern productions of Shakespeare are dry, static, intellectual, academic and over-analysed. His work has become institutionalised, where it is no longer explored with an open mind. Yet, the power of Shakespeare's language, it's rhythm and dynamics, are undeniable, not just in the original language, but in the many excellent German translations that have been made since the early 1700's. This is because German syntax and construction lend themselves easily to the reproduction of these elements from the original version. How is it possible, then, that this same energy is often lost in theatrical interpretations of his work?

Shakespeare's language is rhythmic and musical, but it's principal element is the word, and words have meanings, meanings which can be discussed, using other words, and so on, ad infinitum.Music is much freer from this pitfall. People don't discuss the meaning of music. They speak of tone quality, of major, minor, diminished, augmented. Of time signature, of 8 bar cycles, of AABA structure, or ABA or ABC. Of allegro, pianissimo, scherzo, and so on. They have a vocabulary to describe the basic elements in their art that defy rational analysis. Even musical theory is nothing other than an intellectual dance around reality, reality being the music itself, of which all musicians are aware. The drama lacks this vocabulary. However, the drama does not merely consist of discursive symbols. It's principal elements, as every casting director knows, consist of irrational things, of symbols that defy rational analysis, of architypes that can be recognised again and again. In other words, the drama is poetry, and poetry, as an art, can be as non-discursive as music, or dance, or architecture, or any other art form. In both English and German translation, Shakespearean poetry dances!

The Berliner Shakespeare Ensemble is not just about Theatre. We work with film-makers, with musicians, with dancers, with painters, with anyone and in any artistic environment where people feel a deep connection with the work of the Elizabethan poet whose name was William Shakespeare.