By Brian Bell, director
My experience with the Shakespeariment in Hamburg was excellent. This was surprising because I had not worked with amateurs on this format before. I was a little worried about how it would go from a technical perspective, so I went in with moderate expectations. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of people who auditioned had some professional and lots of amateur experience in the English-speaking theatre scene in Hamburg. Interestingly enough, maybe because they weren’t “professionals,” they took their work almost more seriously than the professionals do. The level of preparation and rigour with which the participants approached the texts and the format was outstanding.
We had a lot of luck with the entire cast. In particular, the leads playing Rosalind and Orlando, Helen Khorrami and Max Kilgus, were exceptional and really carried the show. This is extremely important for the Shakespeariment, where the risk is that while weak leads try to remember their lines, the audience zones out. But this didn’t happen at all. In fact, the As You Like It that I saw in Hamburg was the best As You Like It the Shakespeariment series has produced since 2016 and one of the best Shakespeariment
performances I’ve ever seen. This was a real surprise. It was also the first time we included a table read in the process, which was an excellent addition and really helped explain the format, giving people a little sense of the direction in which the project was going. So, we had an extra rehearsal that, in this particular format, we wouldn’t normally have had, which contributed to the brilliant performances. (It also made me consider whether table reads would benefit my professional actors.)
What’s particularly special about this format is that it brings people together around Shakespeare and creates a live experience in which anything can go wrong—but when it doesn’t, as in this performance, the result is even more incredible both to the audience and the performers. And you can feel a sense of urgency, surprise and delight emanating from the actors and carrying over to the audience. Everybody feels that they are contributing—because they are. It makes for a really special evening of theatre.
I am very, very pleased with how everything went in Hamburg and I am also optimistic that the group of people who worked on this Shakespeariment in March 2026 is already a little ensemble—though we’re always open to new people, of course! It seems like there’s a hunger to do it again, and I’d love to be able to do another show with them. Now the possibilities are wide open as to whether we do another comedy or even a tragedy or a history play. We have done it once with a funny play that is easy to understand. It would be exciting to take this group of people and Shakespeariment further, stretching ourselves a little further in both the casting and the choice of play. I had a wonderful experience, and it would be very special to work with the University Players again.