The EDS - who we are and what we do

The English Dramatic Society (EDS) is a regularly performing English theatre group at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg language centre (Sprachenzentrum). We produce two plays every year - usually, well actually almost always comedies - in February and July.

The English Dramatic Society first took to the stage in 1972 with a production of “The Country Wife” by Wycherly.

Since then the ever-changing company of students, lecturers and professors and their friends, spouses, children and pets, has produced more than seventy plays.

We’ve played Ayckbourn, Allen and Albee, Beckett and Bolt, Fry and Friel, Sheridan, Stoppard, Shaw and Shakespeare, Wilde and Wilder. 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.

Okay! We lied about the kangaroo, the virgin was pregnant and the xylophone was in fact a glockenspiel… but it’s still an impressive list.

Not that quantity is all we have to offer, of course.

Interested? Maybe you'd like to join us?

The Director

The EDS has seen a number of directors over its 38 year history - to be precise. The "longest serving" director is Mr. Damian H Quinn who over a period of 20 years directed no fewer than 40 EDS productions.

The EDS is currently directed by Kirsten Henry. Kirsten is a former student of Theatre Studies and English at the University of Erlangen, and has been a member of the EDS since 2001 when she acted in the production Front Page. Kirsten has since acted in a number of EDS plays and also been involved in the technical side (lighting, stage design) of several shows. Since taking over from Damian Quinn in October 2006 she has directed the last eight plays - “The Taming of the Shrew” in February 2007, “Twelfth Night” in July 2007, “My Son Is Crazy But Promising” in February 2008, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in July 2008,  Ben Travers' hilarious farce "Plunder" in February 2009, Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" in July 2009 and most recently "As You Like It" in February 2010. The current production, Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost is Kirsten's eighth EDS production and 6th Shakespeare play.

The Theatre

The Experimentiertheater (The “EX”) in Erlangen Bismarckstr. 1 (within the main building of the faculty of philosophy and Audimax, and part of the Institute for Theatre and Media) is a technically well-equipped theatre with a variable stage area and variable seating and space for up to approximately 180 people. For over 35 years the EDS has been a regular “guest” in the Experimentiertheater, at the end of each university semester.