A European Midsummer Night’s Dream Erasmus Project

Project Title

A European Midsummer Night’s Dream

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

With our project, we want to focus on the European reception of Shakespeare and his works in realizing a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (including everything that is relevant for a theatre production like technical support, costumes, props, stage design etc.). Therefore, every partner from the European countries Germany, Greece, Finland and Spain come together to work on performing the already mentioned comedy.
During the 23-month run of our project, we want to work on rehearsing and playing the comedy and want to focus little projects on the topics of the play/Shakespeare (e.g. biological realization of dreams, Greek theatre, Shakespeare in modern pop culture…). Shakespeare not only connects past and present, but is also commonly read in schools throughout Europe, which means every student will come in touch with Shakespeare during his or her school career at least once. Therefore, performing a play of Shakespeare presents a creative opportunity for students to get familiar with him.
Apart from Shakespeare, our project also combines several different aspects of relevance for the personal development of every student participating. Besides deepening the understanding of the European heritage of Shakespeare, being involved in realizing a theatre production presents the opportunity to explore personal boundaries. Being responsible for costume and stage design as well as the technical support and performing on a “real” stage at the local German theatre, presents specific challenges, which lead to personal growth in overcoming them. Especially when faced with combining different cultures and mind-sets during the development of the play. The final result is a theatre production that will be performed on Midsummer 2022 in the Slesvighus in Schleswig, Germany. Every participating country performs one act of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in their own language, whereas the fifth and final act will be performed by all participants, therefore creating a mingle and mix of various European languages. This represents on the one hand our uniqueness but emphasizes on the other hand also our mutual understanding of each other.
The play will be performed/produced by the students, who are aged between 15 – 19, also including the local drama clubs at each school as well as various workshops on acting in every participating country. All students who want to creatively engage with Shakespeare and produce a theatre play are free to join us. Should students not be interested in acting, they can participate in multiple other ways (costume design, sound design, media coverage, advertisement, merchandise to name only a few).
During the activities, we focus on character development and developing acting skills. A character like Puck for example, who appears in every act, needs to be recognizable throughout the play even when impersonated by different students. Engaging in acting workshops and experiencing/performing on stages of various National Theatres will broaden the horizon of our students just like getting familiar with different European cultures through living in host families and working together on a common goal. Surely faced with different obstacles and possibilities, all students will learn to be responsible for their own working progress, to take a lead and communicate/coordinate difficulties and results with each other. Thus they gain insight into a multi-layered working progress, which challenges every individual. Apart from hopefully winning live-long friends over all of Europe, all participants mature emotionally, psychologically and personally, students just as teachers alike.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122453 Eur

Project Coordinator

Domschule Schleswig & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Fundacion Escuela Teresiana – Pare Enric d’Osso
• Mattlidens Gymnasium
• 4th Senior High School of Xanthi