A Midsummer Night´s Dream
Gavella Drama Theatre, Zagreb 2008

Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Aleksandar Popovski

William Shakespeare's play is dramaturgically divided into three clearly discernable parts which form the framework of the storyline.The beginning and the end are situated within the boundaries of the city while the central part takes place outside the walls, in the mythical territory of the woods. Reality is what happens in broad daylight, in front of the closed theatrical curtain which separates facts from illusions; in the ordinary world of the audience. This is the domain of the City. As the story develops, the lights are diminished, a mechanism holding the curtain-stripes in front position slides back and the fabric of the fourth wall softly dissolves into an enchanted night forest. The audience is now lurking behind the portal and into the black box, into the oneiric darkness of the woods, where magic reigns and strange things come to pass. This moment of transition from the real world into the imaginary, from facts to fantasy, is what really sets off the entire concept. The dissolution of the theatre curtain means that the portal is now open, that these two worlds are now mixing and that magic is released into the everyday. 

Only one element, the curtain, is used to create depth of field, mobility and functionality of the setting, allowing the actors and acrobats a range of activities while still retaining the purity of intervention. The audience, transfixed by the unfolding of the shifting fabric, cannot but surrender to the allures of the forest before losing its way forever somewhere on the thin line between dream and reality.

 

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