A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Note from the Directors

[Introduction]
[Tour Schedule]

We hope that this is not a standard production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. The play has been performed many times, and many of its characters have descended into the realm of caricature. We were keen to get beyond this, and explore the basic emotions and situations that give the play and its characters their depth. Our fairies are not ethereal, floaty beings; our mechanicals are not stupid, rustic clichés; and our lovers, at times, are genuinely afraid and despairing. In order to achieve this emotional complexity, we tried to discover physical impulses which corresponded with emotional states. For example, in the scene where Hermia believes that Demetrius has murdered her Lysander, we asked theactress to play the scene as though she were standing on the edge of a high cliff, preparing to throw herself off. We also concentrated on developing a physical vocabulary that defined each character. Among other things, we made use of Grotowski's mask work, asking actors to shift the centre of their movement up and down their bodies, imagining that their faces were becoming a series of masks, from Mother to Hero. We used these archetypes to consider how shifting the centre of balance affects a character's entire range of movement, and instantly changes the impression that they convey.

the feast

In the case of the mechanicals, we were anxious to inject new life into what had become slightly hackneyed (and indeed patronising) scenes. We wanted to convince the audience that this was a group of people earnestly grappling with the problems of theatre and representation, in spite of their lack of experience. In order to achieve this, we spent a great deal of time improvising around Shakespeare's words. After all, these are characters in a rehearsal, and we made that rehearsal our rehearsal, with directors, costume designer and composer all interacting with the play's characters as if we were all preparing for a performance of 'Pyramus and Thisbe'. Also important to the dynamic of these scenes, as with those of the Athenian court, was the idea of status. We spent several rehearsals playing games in which actors had to either increase or lower their status with every line they spoke. Using this technique, we instantly had available several different interpretations of each scene.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is a play about illusion, representation and theatre. As such, we decided to add another level of theatricality by presenting the whole production as if it were a rehearsal for a play called 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. For this reason, you will see some actors sitting on the sidelines as others perform their parts. This then suggested to us that the mechanicals might be treated as the technical crew of that play, the backstage team who have got together in their spare time and decided to put on a play of their own, 'Pyramus and Thisbe'. However, in the dream-like confusion of the forest-stage, the worlds of the two plays collide. In the final scene, they perform 'Pyramus and Thisbe' (the play that they rehearsed in the gaps of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' rehearsal), within yhe court setting of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

As a touring production, we faced certain limitations in terms of set, cast size and sound. We decided to use these to our advantage. Our set is minimal, and meant to suggest the improvised nature of a rehearsal room. The doubling of Theseus/Oberon and Titania/Hippolyta is intended to indicate the way in which the world of the forest mirrors and simultaneously inverts the order of the court. We decided, too, to incorporate a live musician, who could participate in the 'rehearsals' we presented.

As much as these things need to be carefully thought through, they ought not to be uppermost in the minds of the audience. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is one of Shakespeare's most entertaining comedies, and we hope you enjoy it.