(Penny Rixon) What do you think a fairy should look like?
(Penny Rixon) It's this question perhaps more than any other,
(Penny Rixon) which has to be answered by the production team staging this play. 4 00:00:18 00:00:20 The way they did it at Glyndebourne a few years back,
when they were almost part of the trees, and then they appeared and….
I mean it's nice if they do look pretty, but then they've got to have a Mendelssohn…
..and all that sort of jazz you know, people don't do it like that these days do they?
Like the sugar plum fairy.
You see, you're talking to a man who actually sees different things like auras…
..and all of that, so I believe in looking at the world differently so for me - vibrant.
They're little things with wings.
(Penny Rixon) The Regents Park Theatre puts on the play regularly,
(Penny Rixon) and many of its patrons may well have seen…
(Penny Rixon) ..three or four different versions over the years.
(Penny Rixon) A Midsummer Night's Dream is a childhood favourite, so audiences have…
(Penny Rixon) ..strong ideas about what is fitting, and directors do as well.
(Jonathan Miller) I wanted to get rid of the whole idea of these awful people…
(Jonathan Miller) ..with diamante make up at the corner of their eyes…
..walking on the balls of their feet, flitting in with yards of…
..bejewelled chiffon behind them. And in the same way I wanted to get rid of all these…
(Jonathan Miller) ..gauzy diaphanous entomological fairies which somehow are regarded as…
(Jonathan Miller) ..de rigueur when people talk about the magic,
(Jonathan Miller) "what are you going to do about the magic"? And they always say…
.."well that's not a - they're not fairies", as if someone has got some privileged access…
..to fairies, and knows what fairies look like.
Titania: Sing me now asleep. Then to your offices, and let me rest.
(Rachel Kavanaugh) I mean there's a problem again about if you give them wings...
(Rachel Kavanaugh) ..then what happens if we don't see them fly? You think well,
(Rachel Kavanaugh) there's these people with wings but they never fly.
So I decided not to give them wings, cos obviously they can't fly in this theatre…
..I mean you could do it on wires or whatever, but flying in the play has,
you know it is a poetic thing flying for the fairies, it's a journey that they go on,
and the play is a dream and in dreams flying means all sorts of different things.
(Penny Rixon) So if directors can' t make their fairies really fly,
(Penny Rixon) they have to come up with new ways of creating magic for the modern world.
Well, all I have is this memory of fairies in black bin liners,
so I'm sure that it's gonna be better than that tonight.
I mean Spielberg can do wonderful things with computers,
but here it's people, it's sort of slightly more real, it's immediate.
Do they have magic wands as well, they have magic wands as well.
And they're very light and elf like.
Tony Gash: We always have this stupid idea of something which is,
and every generation recreates it , of something which is traditional Shakespeare.
You know which is doublet and hose and gauze wings and… in this play.
And, in a funny way we keep on creeping back to it, through…
..rejecting those sorts of notions of the fact that it's an abstract space.
I think people have to you know learn again and be told again and again,
particularly in a televisual age, that theatre is an abstract place,
it's a... you know, a square in a circle or something like that, it's an empty space.
Lysander: Speak thou now. -Puck: Here, villain!
(Penny Rixon) In this section of the video, I want to introduce you to...
(Penny Rixon) ..some notable productions of this century.
Lysander: …straight! -Puck: (laughs)
(Penny Rixon) The first of these, Peter Brook's for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1970,
(Penny Rixon) has passed into theatrical legend.
(Penny Rixon) Watch how Brook interprets magic in the 20th century,
(Penny Rixon) and how he uses the physical resources of the theatre to conjure up…
(Penny Rixon) ..his own brand of stage magic. You'll also see…
(Penny Rixon) ..how he has influenced subsequent directors.
(Peter Brook) Every word has a meaning and words get debased.
Peter Brook: Magic has a meaning and has a reality. But that has nothing to do with…
..conjuring tricks. We start with a brilliant white light, a white background and...
(Peter Brook) ..all the elements clearly seen.
(Jonathan Miller) I think for most of us who worked in the theatre,
(Jonathan Miller) there was something quite revolutionary about…
(Jonathan Miller) ..the Dream that Peter Brook did. I mean, it didn't…
(Jonathan Miller) ..change my mind about the setting of The Midsummer Night's Dream,
(Jonathan Miller) it changed all of our minds about the way things could be staged.
(Jonathan Miller) The fact that the plays didn't have to literally represent…
(Jonathan Miller) ..what seemed to be mentioned in them. And certainly that's what…
..Brook showed us, that the fact that fairy flight is mentioned in the play doesn't mean…
..that you have to use it in that way and what he did was to use metaphors...
..of swings and trapezes and spinning plates on the end of flexible poles and so forth,
(Jonathan Miller) ..to represent flowers and flight. And the fact that it didn't…
(Jonathan Miller) ..have to take place in something which literally represented a forest,
(Jonathan Miller) it liberated us all from literal representation.
(Penny Rixon) What Brook was doing was rejecting a tradition of those…
(Penny Rixon) ..little things with wings that had dominated productions for decades.
Oberon: What thou see'st when thou dost wake, do it for thy true-love take,
love and languish for his sake: be it ounce or cat or bear,
pard, or boar with bristled hair, in thy eye that shall appear.
When thou wakest, it is thy dear. Wake, when some vile thing is near.
(Peter Brook) I had a very strong feeling that behind the play as we know it…
(Peter Brook) ..was something much richer and fuller, and I felt that this could…
(Peter Brook) ..come to life in a theatre through using…
(Peter Brook) ..a very wide range of theatrical techniques.
Hermia: Lysander! What? Out of hearing?
(Peter Brook) So that in rehearsals we'd arrived at this white box,
(Peter Brook) and a lot of possibilities. Galleries and trapezes and a lot of…
(Peter Brook) ..brilliant colours in movement. The excitement of rehearsal is…
(Peter Brook) ..coming with open possibilities that then grow and…
(Peter Brook) ..developed through the collaboration with the actors.