On Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th August, Permanently Bard in association with Fuller’s Inns is presenting A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare at 7.30pm at The King and Queen pub in the High Street, Caterham-on-the-Hill.

When most people talk Shakespeare, they think Stratford-upon-Avon, The Globe or The Old Vic and they don’t immediately conjure up images of their local pub’s beer garden. But in fact, in Shakespeare’s day, the local inn yard was very often the site of the finest theatrical entertainment in the kingdom. It was the regulation of Inn Yard Theatres in London in 1574 that gave rise to the Playhouses such as the Rose, The Globe, The Swan and others. Before that ‘The Pub was the Thing’!

In 2010, theatre producer and publican, Tom Tucker, dreamed up the idea of staging Shakespeare in his beer garden at the Rose & Crown in Ealing. That production of Much Ado About Nothing was subject to a torrential downpour all week, but the show went on. Some scenes were performed in wellingtons under umbrellas, but nothing seemed to dampen the spirits of the very eager audiences. For many, it was their first taste of Shakespeare, for others it shattered stereotypes of Shakespeare being stuffy or inaccessible.

By 2013, Tucker had founded Permanently Bard, a theatre company dedicated to the production of Shakespeare’s plays in pubs. After seven performances of Twelfth Night in two Fuller’s pubs in 2013, a plan was formulated to tour 12 pubs across the south of England in summer 2014 performing the bard’s most popular play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Fuller’s Inns Managing Director Jonathon Swaine said: “I’d love more events like this to happen. Events like these put smiles on people’s faces. In this day and age, the more events that we can stage to help connect people like this together, as opposed to being in front of our TVs on our sofas, the better. They enrich our lives.”

To book tickets for the performance at The King and Queen or one of the other 11 pub gardens staging the play, visit www.fullers.co.uk/shakespeare