School Prize 2026

The 2026 School Prize was awarded to Theresien-Gymnasium Munich for the project “Ohne Eselskopf, aber fünf Akte weiter: Shakespeares Ein Sommernachtstraum auf die Bühne gebracht und weitergedacht (grades 7 to 11)”

How unfortunate that William Shakespeare never conceived a sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream! At Theresien-Gymnasium Munich, twenty young people aged 13 to 16 performed William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in October 2025—and they simply do not want to stop!

Together with their teacher, Dr Susanne Fejér, they worked on Shakespeare’s comedy for both a mixed-age elective theatre group and an audience ranging from younger sisters to older brothers and grandmothers. To this end, they jointly developed an adapted version that preserved as much as possible of Shakespeare’s vivid language and verbal wit while removing obstacles to understanding.

This theatre work has now grown almost organically, during the following school year, into a subsequent project: a sequel written by the students—without an ass’s head, but imagined five acts further. It is an attempt to continue Shakespeare’s literary method through close observation and to expand it by incorporating themes from the students’ own contemporary experience. What happens to the young lovers and the craftsmen when mistrust is sown, and when it is not magical influence causing mix-ups and strife, but the dynamics of (digital) communication between them? A new text is emerging, which is intended to be performed as a stage play or realised as an audio drama in 2027.

With these two phases of the project, Theresien-Gymnasium applied for the German Shakespeare Society’s School Prize, since the theatre group’s work ranges from understanding and performing poetic language to creatively appropriating and updating it. The submission documents the project’s concept, process, and outcomes, as well as the central role played by the students in developing the text, rehearsing, staging, and presenting the work. An accompanying materials section illustrates the two phases of the project with visual and textual material, including photographs of the performances, comparisons of the different versions of the text, and extensions written by the students.

You can download an abridged version of the submission here.

Project Funding and School Prize of the German Shakespeare Society

The German Shakespeare Society funds outstanding projects, initiatives, and teaching formats that convey Shakespeare’s works, person, and era in innovative ways. The call for proposals should motivate learners and teachers to explore creative and contemporary approaches to engaging with Shakespeare’s texts, themes, and characters.

Applications are welcome from student teams, teachers with their classes, subject departments, or project groups (e.g., literature or theatre clubs, interdisciplinary teams) from all school types and grade levels. Each year, up to three projects will be funded, with 500 euros for each project.

Find further information here.

The Forum Shakespeare & School

takes place as part of the conferences of the German Shakespeare Society and reflects the thematic focus of each event. It provides a space to explore questions surrounding contemporary engagements with Shakespeare in the context of foreign language education.

The Forum

• draws on insights from literature pedagogy and cultural learning, as well as from English language teaching practice, dramaturgy, and theatre education
•  is designed as an open and inclusive format aimed at a broad audience: it addresses teachers and student teachers, researchers in the fields of Shakespeare and Shakespeare pedagogy, theatre practitioners, and participants of the Shakespeare conference with an interest in education
• responds to developments in curricula as well as cultural and sociopolitical discourses (e.g. concerning Shakespeare and truth/fake news, gender roles, or popular culture)
• is participatory and dialogic in nature: participants are warmly invited to actively take part, explore teaching approaches and discuss ideas
• can be recognised as a professional development event for teachers

For inquiries or if you are interested in collaborating, please contact Dr Max von Blanckenburg (max.vonblanckenburg@ur.de).