From the Director

Shakespeare was a lover of ancient tales. So much so that he took them and reimagined these tales for his audience. One of William Shakespeare’s multitudinous gifts is in transforming seemingly simple plots into complex character observations, ultimately giving the original tale a twist with riveting psychological insights.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is steeped in Ancient Greek mythology and in particular it is influenced by the Roman poet Ovid’s work Metamorphosis, which is a free flowing retelling of Greek tales of personal, physical, and spiritual transformation.

Along with its almost flawless circular structure, the play feeds on the audience’s desire for transformation. We leave the rigid laws of the rational human world to the free-form dreaming state of the psyche. A metaphorical forest full of desires, dangers, ebullient enlightenment and horrific darkness.

Transformation of the self is a powerful drug and something which is out of reach for the ‘unawakened’. Here in the forest, we the dreamers can leave our conservative world with its laws and morals and experience a transformation of the masculine, feminine, love, lust, sexuality, the loss of our individualism and finally a kind of ego death. The possibility of transforming ourselves into someone or something better is on show. On the flip side, it’s a forest where the psychological states of doubt, insecurity, body image, sexual confusion, loneliness, violence and terror are exposed for us to see. If only we the dreamers could recall our dreams in full.

These oppositional states of consciousness bring us, the audience, into the hilarious joy of one of Shakespeare best comedies. This deceptively simple play brings such laughter to audiences because at its core it is a highly complex work of character and structure. But as the tradie Peter Quince says while directing his fellow workers in rehearsal - there are two hard things…

The easiest one to reconcile, as a director, is the problem with Time. Is it day? Is it night? Or are we just stumbling through a dream of ourselves? Our play is a quick 55 minutes. A rollicking rollercoaster ride through the characters’ deepest desires which ultimately ends in the unity of community. Easy to forgive this flaw when magic and mayhem are close bedfellows.

The second is the problem of the Fairies. What are Fairies and what role do they play for us in a modern setting? We have taken a broad approach that Fairies are the manifestation of our need as humans to be on the outside. Like a child at an adults dinner party, or the intoxicated participants of a subculture celebrating itself, or the loiterers at a suburban train station looking for meaning. This ‘outsider’ desire to meddle or subvert the order of the structured world of our play is represented by free thinking, impulsive beings who can both fight for territory, break the rules of societal order and doing so can bring about a complex enlightenment of not just themselves, but of us, the audience.

JASON KLARWEIN - Director

The Duke Theseus and the Amazon warrior Hippolyta plan their lavish wedding. They are interrupted by Egeus and his rebellious daughter Hermia. Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius but she refuses, because she’s in love with Lysander. The Duke orders Hermia to obey her father or, according to an ancient law, she must face a death penalty or enter a convent.

Hermia and Lysander decide to elope that night. They confide in their friend Helena. However, Helena is secretly in love with Demetrius, so, hoping to win his affection, she tells him of Hermia’s plan. That night, all four lovers run away into the forest.

Meanwhile, a group of tradies are planning to perform a play in celebration of the Duke’s wedding. They rehearse The Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in the same forest.

Elsewhere, the Fairy King (Oberon) and the Fairy Queen (Titania) run into each other in the human world and argue who is to blame for the disintegration of their relationship and nature’s climate.

Oberon sends his offsider fairy (Robin ‘Puck’ Goodfellow) to find a magic plant to cast a spell on Titania. The juice of the plant, when squeezed onto the eyes of someone asleep, causes them to fall in love with the first creature they see when they wake up. Oberon uses the juice on Titania as she sleeps in her bower.

Puck overhears the tradies rehearsing and magically transforms Nick Bottom’s head into that of an ass. The other tradies are terrified and flee the forest. When Titania wakes, the first creature she sees is Bottom and she falls rapturously in love with him.

Helena chases Demetrius in the forest and their fighting disturbs Oberon. He tells Puck to use the magic juice on Demetrius too, so that he will fall in love with Helena. However Puck confuses the identity of Demetrius and uses it on Lysander instead, who promptly falls in love with Helena. Both women are confused and Hermia furiously attacks her friend, Helena.

Stop reading now if you don’t want to know how it ends...

Eventually, Oberon lifts all the enchantments and puts the humans to sleep. Titania is horrified that she’s been in love with an ass. On waking, the lovers decide the night’s events must have all been a dream. Lysander and Hermia are back to normal, and Demetrius admits he does love Helena after all. Hermia survives the harsh sentence of death brought against her by her father and Theseus. The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta becomes a triple celebration as the other human couples marry too. Quince and Bottom’s tradie theatre troupe amuses the couples with their performance of the play. As the couples retire, Puck and the First Fairy appear, and ask the audience to applaud if they enjoyed the performance.