One of the elements that makes our current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream so magical is the single set piece that is affectionately referred to by the cast, crew and creative team as “the dream sheet,” a large piece of vinyl suspended horizontally above the stage that breathes and moves with the music. Explore the Photo Gallery.
COC Associate Technical Director, Barney Bayliss, explains how it works. Listen online, or download the file (right-click and select "Save Target As").
A scene from the COC's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo: Gary Beechey © 2009
Posted by Alexander Neef / in Productions / comments (0) / permalink
Our production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is very poetic. Director Neil Armfield and designer Dale Ferguson have left a lot of space for the theatrical aspects of this opera to breathe, with clarity and simplicity. A single, beautiful and ethereal major set piece has the ability to be interpreted different ways, creating moods with lighting and staging that seem to magically transform scene to scene.
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Regarding Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the most interesting thing about performing a Shakespeare-based opera here, is that the connection to Shakespeare is so much stronger than in a non-English speaking country. It's much more part of the culture, like performing Faust in Germany, where most people are familiar with Goethe's play, on which that opera was based.
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