A Midsummer Night's Dream 2019
| A Midsummer Night's Dream 2019 | |
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| Summary | |
| Dates 22th February - 26th February 2019
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| Performance Course Second Year BA Acting
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| Location Chandler Studio Theatre
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| Creative Team | |
| Director Ali De Souza
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| Assistant Director Michael Wallace
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| Musical Director Jacob Kerzner
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| Composer Aidan Teplitzky
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| Fight Director Raymond Short
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| Designer Myrrin Hunter-Urie
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| Sound Designer | |
| Lighting Designer | |
| Production Team | |
| Stage Manager | |
| Deputy Stage Manager | |
| Assistant Stage Manager Rehearsals | |
| Assistant Stage Manager Rehearsals | |
| Assistant Stage Manager Rehearsals | |
| Assistant Stage Manager | |
| Assistant Stage Manager | |
| Stage Supervisor | |
| Stage Supervisor | |
| Production Electrician | |
| Deputy Production Electrician | |
| LX Programmer | |
| Stage LX | |
| Sound No.2/Operator | |
Overview
To save their forbidden love, a girl and a boy elope and get lost in an enchanted forest. Pursued by jealous friends and hateful enemies, they encounter some belligerent fairies who throw their plans into chaos. The realms of reality and dreams blur as the supernatural seduces the unremarkable.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a story of illusion, mischief and transformation, celebrating the creative and often destructive power of love. It remains one of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays, popular for its feast of magic, madness and humour.
This is the BA Acting Year 2 Production from 2019.
Cast
Hermia - Felixe Forde
Theseus/Cobweb - Guy Hodgkinson
Hippolyta/Moth - Rebecca Gunn
Egeus/Fairy - Prince K. Appiah
Demetrius - Luke Sumner
Lysander - Jack McCreadie
Helena - Eimear Fearon
Quince (Moon) - Angus Taylor
Nick Bottom (Pyramus) - Jamie Burch
Flute (Thisbe) - Keiran Duncan
Robin Starveling (Wall)/Peaseblossom - Arthur Vasquez
Snug (Lion)/Mustardseed - Asma Messaodene
Puck - Charlie O'Conor
Oberon - Lawrence Hodgson-Mullings
Titania - Veera Lapinkoski
BSL Narrators - EJ Raymond, Bea Webster
Stage Management
This wasn't a props heavy show, but there were lots of makes and a couple buys, this kept everyone busy. Most of the items were borrowed from the props store and NTS.
Technical Stage Management
The most complex element of this show were the 5 'Trees' made from hemp lines with books attached and pea lights the full length. These 'Trees' were also to fly out during the action.
All 5 trees were done on separate lines and in total required a 3 operators to ensure smooth running.
Beyond this the set contained a bank of cloths next to each tree which were hung from the catwalks.
For this show we also had to create a snowdrop which initially seemed difficult but for the entire section where it was to be snowing I used a total of 1.5 handfuls of snow.
As seen in the above photographs the show also included a snow drop that was entirely focused on one character. Doing this in the Chandler was absolutely great fun. In this case the character was mostly performing downstage of the action. This meant that we had to hang a 12x3 Border to hang inside the catwalk and meant that the whole scene was done entirely blind; aside from a 5 - 6 inch gap that could only be seen whilst on absolute maximum tip toes, all whilst running up and down the catwalk.
There was also a mirror ball that had to fly in. In the final scene where all four of the young lovers dance together. This was rigged from a crossbar using two small orange snatchblocks and was controlled with an 11mm black line which was then cleated to the catwalk.
Lighting
An exciting feature for the electrics team on this run was using Pea-Lights to compliment the hung "trees", as pictured in the above section. Also we have to mention the mirror ball we hung in the rig- the mirror ball we have in the LX store was being used on Opera, so we had to obtain a mirror ball and a rotator. We found the mirror ball within the building, and borrowed the rotator courtesy of the Tron. Otherwise, we had a very pleasant run encountering minimal issues along the way- a joy for all.
Sound
We used the KV2 ESD12's in a different than normal orientation. We had two speakers rigged on the front bar (behind the seating bank), two speakers on the downstage bar of Catwalk 3 and finally two in stereo position on the downstage edge of Catwalk 2, both of these speakers have rotated horns. This orientation helped greatly to achieve the Surround sound effect that the director was looking for. We also used the two KV2 EX1.5 Active Subwoofers, which assisted in creating the dark effect the was required.
The Sound design required the use of an Audio interface to split up the outputs in order for us to gain the effect. We used the Focusrite 18i20 which was great to work with. The desk we used for the show was the Yamaha QL5, which was a new piece of equipment added to the Chandler along with the KV2 speakers in Summer 2018. The Patch list for the show is below
There was collaboration with the Music School on this show. Aidan Teplitzky, a Masters Composition student, was the Composer of the pieces which were adapted in QLab for the performance by the sound designer. There was a microphone added last minute to the performer that played the character Puck as the director wanted to create a spooky reverb effect which does not show on the Patch list above. We were able to achieve this effect using a DPA microphone which was weaved through her hair.