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The Bonn University Shakespeare Company e.V. (BUSC) is an independent theatre company based at the University of Bonn, Germany. It was founded by students of the Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies.
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History
The BUSC was founded in November 1992 by English Studies students Thilo Veenema and Magnus Huber after the previous theatre company at the English Department had broken up. According to §21 BGB, it is a strictly non-commercial organisation. In 2015, the group had about a hundred active members and nearly two hundred former members. The group’s main aim is the promotion of art and culture in Bonn and the area, especially the promotion of the works of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and other English-language authors. The group is particularly interested in cooperating with schools in the area. Furthermore, the BUSC collaborates with Shakespeare scholars like Uwe Baumann (University of Bonn) and Russell Jackson (University of Birmingham), the latter of which has previously worked as an advisor for film adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. The company’s performance programmes usually contain academic articles on the play performed, written by professors and lecturers at the University of Bonn. Normally, the BUSC performs about two plays per year, one in the summer term and one in the winter term. All plays are performed in the original English version, the only exception being “Vell Jedöhns wääje nüß”, a Rhineland dialect translation of Much Ado About Nothing, in the year 2000. For this production the group was awarded the “Martin-Lehnert-Preis” by the German Shakespeare Society. Most performances take place at the Brotfabrik theatre in Bonn-Beuel, where the plays are performed for six to ten days in a row. The average number of performances per production is seven.
Apart from Shakespeare’s plays, the group also performs tragedies and comedies by Christopher Marlowe, John Ford, Oscar Wilde or T.S. Eliot. In 2002, the group staged their first musical with Little Shop of Horrors. In 2003 and 2004, the BUSC were invited to perform at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in Neuss, Germany, with their productions of Timon of Athens and “Vell Jedöhns wääje nüß/Much Ado About Nothing”. Within Bonn, the group also performed at the Haus der Springmaus theatre, on Bonn’s Museumsmeile, and Poppelsdorf Palace. In 2002, the group’s ten year anniversary was celebrated with a one-week Shakespeare festival consisting of performances and talks. Every now and then, members of the BUSC have the opportunity to attend workshops with theatre professionals, for example in Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon in 2005.