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Description
We think it's very important for you all to have some experience of how A Midsummer Night's Dream has been staged, and so we're going to show you a series of video recordings from different product
...ions.
Of course, what we'd really like to do is take you all to the theatre to see several different
performances, but we can't.
Still, this is the next best thing, and we'll also give you the chance to hear what audiences have thought about this well loved play.
What do you think a fairy should look like? It's this question perhaps more than any other, which has to be answered by the production team staging this play.
[T]his section of the video is going to concentrate on the way actors can create radically different interpretations of a Shakespearean role.
We'd also like you to think about a more practical point, which is often neglected by audiences as well as academics, the casting process.
In the next section graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art return to hear the views of a very experienced television and theatre performer.
Best known in Britain for playing in situation comedy in the nineteen seventies and eighties, Richard Briers returned lo classical theatre as Malvolio for the Renaissance Theatre Company. We can explore the similarities in performance between classical theatre and popular comedy by seeing Twelfth Night as a situation comedy of its day.
| 1 | 00:00:03,000 | 00:00:06,000 | (Penny Rixon) What do you think a fairy should look like? |
| 2 | 00:00:06,000 | 00:00:08,000 | (Penny Rixon) It's this question perhaps more than any other, |
| 3 | 00:00:09,000 | 00:00:12,000 | (Penny Rixon) which has to be answered by the production team staging this play. |
| 4 | 00:00:18,000 | 00:00:20,000 | The way they did it at Glyndebourne a few years back, |
| 5 | 00:00:21,000 | 00:00:23,000 | when they were almost part of the trees, and then they appeared and…. |
| 6 | 00:00:25,000 | 00:00:28,000 | I mean it's nice if they do look pretty, but then they've got to have a Mendelssohn… |
| 7 | 00:00:28,000 | 00:00:33,000 | ..and all that sort of jazz you know, people don't do it like that these days do they? |
| 8 | 00:00:33,000 | 00:00:35,000 | Like the sugar plum fairy. |
| 9 | 00:00:35,000 | 00:00:38,000 | You see, you're talking to a man who actually sees different things like auras… |
| 10 | 00:00:39,000 | 00:00:47,000 | ..and all of that, so I believe in looking at the world differently so for me - vibrant. |
| 11 | 00:00:48,000 | 00:00:50,000 | They're little things with wings. |
| 12 | 00:00:52,000 | 00:00:55,000 | (Penny Rixon) The Regents Park Theatre puts on the play regularly, |
| 13 | 00:00:56,000 | 00:00:57,000 | (Penny Rixon) and many of its patrons may well have seen… |
| 14 | 00:00:57,000 | 00:01:00,000 | (Penny Rixon) ..three or four different versions over the years. |
| 15 | 00:01:01,000 | 00:01:04,000 | (Penny Rixon) A Midsummer Night's Dream is a childhood favourite, so audiences have… |
| 16 | 00:01:04,000 | 00:01:08,000 | (Penny Rixon) ..strong ideas about what is fitting, and directors do as well. |
| 17 | 00:01:11,000 | 00:01:14,000 | (Jonathan Miller) I wanted to get rid of the whole idea of these awful people… |
| 18 | 00:01:15,000 | 00:01:18,000 | (Jonathan Miller) ..with diamante make up at the corner of their eyes… |
| 19 | 00:01:18,000 | 00:01:21,000 | ..walking on the balls of their feet, flitting in with yards of… |
| 20 | 00:01:21,000 | 00:01:26,000 | ..bejewelled chiffon behind them. And in the same way I wanted to get rid of all these… |
| 21 | 00:01:26,000 | 00:01:32,000 | (Jonathan Miller) ..gauzy diaphanous entomological fairies which somehow are regarded as… |
| 22 | 00:01:32,000 | 00:01:34,000 | (Jonathan Miller) ..de rigueur when people talk about the magic, |
| 23 | 00:01:34,000 | 00:01:36,000 | (Jonathan Miller) "what are you going to do about the magic"? And they always say… |
| 24 | 00:01:36,000 | 00:01:41,000 | .."well that's not a - they're not fairies", as if someone has got some privileged access… |
| 25 | 00:01:41,000 | 00:01:45,000 | ..to fairies, and knows what fairies look like. |
| 26 | 00:01:47,000 | 00:01:53,000 | Titania: Sing me now asleep. Then to your offices, and let me rest. |
| 27 | 00:01:58,000 | 00:02:01,000 | (Rachel Kavanaugh) I mean there's a problem again about if you give them wings... |
| 28 | 00:02:01,000 | 00:02:04,000 | (Rachel Kavanaugh) ..then what happens if we don't see them fly? You think well, |
| 29 | 00:02:04,000 | 00:02:06,000 | (Rachel Kavanaugh) there's these people with wings but they never fly. |
| 30 | 00:02:06,000 | 00:02:10,000 | So I decided not to give them wings, cos obviously they can't fly in this theatre… |
| 31 | 00:02:10,000 | 00:02:14,000 | ..I mean you could do it on wires or whatever, but flying in the play has, |
| 32 | 00:02:14,000 | 00:02:19,000 | you know it is a poetic thing flying for the fairies, it's a journey that they go on, |
| 33 | 00:02:20,000 | 00:02:24,000 | and the play is a dream and in dreams flying means all sorts of different things. |
| 34 | 00:02:25,000 | 00:02:28,000 | (Penny Rixon) So if directors can' t make their fairies really fly, |
| 35 | 00:02:28,000 | 00:02:32,000 | (Penny Rixon) they have to come up with new ways of creating magic for the modern world. |
| 36 | 00:02:33,000 | 00:02:36,000 | Well, all I have is this memory of fairies in black bin liners, |
| 37 | 00:02:36,000 | 00:02:39,000 | so I'm sure that it's gonna be better than that tonight. |
| 38 | 00:02:40,000 | 00:02:42,000 | I mean Spielberg can do wonderful things with computers, |
| 39 | 00:02:42,000 | 00:02:45,000 | but here it's people, it's sort of slightly more real, it's immediate. |
| 40 | 00:02:46,000 | 00:02:49,000 | Do they have magic wands as well, they have magic wands as well. |
| 41 | 00:02:50,000 | 00:02:51,000 | And they're very light and elf like. |
| 42 | 00:02:52,000 | 00:02:55,000 | Tony Gash: We always have this stupid idea of something which is, |
| 43 | 00:02:56,000 | 00:03:00,000 | and every generation recreates it , of something which is traditional Shakespeare. |
| 44 | 00:03:01,000 | 00:03:07,000 | You know which is doublet and hose and gauze wings and… in this play. |
| 45 | 00:03:08,000 | 00:03:11,000 | And, in a funny way we keep on creeping back to it, through… |
| 46 | 00:03:12,000 | 00:03:16,000 | ..rejecting those sorts of notions of the fact that it's an abstract space. |
| 47 | 00:03:17,000 | 00:03:20,000 | I think people have to you know learn again and be told again and again, |
| 48 | 00:03:20,000 | 00:03:24,000 | particularly in a televisual age, that theatre is an abstract place, |
| 49 | 00:03:25,000 | 00:03:30,000 | it's a... you know, a square in a circle or something like that, it's an empty space. |
| 50 | 00:03:31,000 | 00:00:37,000 | Lysander: Speak thou now. -Puck: Here, villain! |
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