Sommernachtsträume

In the organizer's words:

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAMS
after William Shakespeare
in a version by Joern Hinkel
Music by Jörg Gollasch
Production Joern Hinkel
Stage Jens Kilian
Costumes Kerstin Micheel
Performed by the Bad Hersfeld Festival Orchestra
Musical direction Christoph Wohlleben
Premiere June 20, 2025, 9 pm
Bad Hersfeld Abbey Ruins

Theseus, the Duke of Athens, decides to marry the Amazon queen Hippolyta. He invites all his relatives to the wedding celebrations. An orchestra is to play and the palace craftsmen are to put on an improvised play to celebrate the day.

The night before the wedding, the inhabitants of the palace find themselves in a fantastic dream world, transforming into mythical creatures and meeting each other in their dreams. The prince wanders through the woods as Oberon, the lord of the fairies, in search of his beloved Titania. Four spoiled young people from Victorian high society, Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, fall in love, duel and fall out of love, and in the midst of exuberant dreams of love, the craftsmen desperately try to rehearse their new play, but find themselves increasingly caught between the fronts of the lovers. The goblin Puck is up to his tricks. In the end, not only do Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander experience increasingly insane emotional confusion, they also encounter people who are actually found in other Shakespeare productions.

Joern Hinkel brings his version to the stage with lots of music specially composed by Jörg Gollasch. The Bad Hersfeld Festival Orchestra will be playing under the direction of Christoph Wohlleben.

The title "Midsummer Night's Dreams" already indicates that Joern Hinkel will make the already crazy story even more spicy in his version. "In the new Hersfeld version, a number of other Shakespeare characters we know from other plays have got lost in the forest. The play is a hymn to love and a hymn to the theater. It is bursting with bizarre ideas, erotic fantasy, unexpected twists, subtle melancholy and fanatical comedy that can be spun further."

At the Bad Hersfeld Festival, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was the first comedy ever to be shown. In 1961, the then artistic director William Dieterle staged the play and showed it for five consecutive years. After that, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was shown in 1983, 1992, 2004, 2005 and 2015.

Joern Hinkel staged the comedy exactly 10 years ago on the "playing field" behind the apse of the abbey ruins. It was his first directorial work in Bad Hersfeld. The youth theater group "Sommernachtsträumer e.V.", among others, emerged from his work with professionals and amateurs.