The English Dramatic Society is a regularly performing amateur English theatre group at the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg language centre.
The EDS in numbers
Since 1972, the EDS has performed a play almost every semester, at the very least once a year. The longest break was four university semesters from summer 2020 – winter 2022 during the coronavirus pandemic.
A total of 103 plays have been produced by the EDS since 1972, 36 of them by the current director, the 15th to be in charge of the group.
William Shakespeare is (perhaps not surprisingly) the playwright whose plays have been performed most often: 13 different plays, 38 including repeats, the most often performed being A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Comedies in the summer, serious plays in the winter
We produce two plays every year
For many years our plays were mostly, well actually almost always comedies. We now usually perform a serious play in February and a comedy at the end of July / beginning of August.
The EDS celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022 having first taken to the stage in 1972 with a production of “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley. Since then the ever-changing company of students, lecturers and professors and their friends, spouses, children and pets, has produced 103 plays altogether.
Something for everyone – and not always Shakespeare!
Productions from A – Z (well, almost)
We’ve performed plays by Ayckbourn, Allen and Albee, Beckett and Bolt, Fry and Friel, Sheridan, Stoppard, Shaw and Shakespeare, Wilde and Wilder.
We’ve played Aristocrats and artisans, barons and beggars, colonels and clowns, damsels and dowagers, elves and fairies, gods and harlots, idiots and jades, kangaroos and lovers, magicians and nymphs, officers and priests, quacks and ringmasters, sirens and troubadours, upstarts, virgins, wastrels, xylophones and zeds. We’ve played them all.