Project

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been told and retold throughout history to exhaustion, and yet its fantastical illustration of humanity’s base compulsions invites new angles to revisit this classic tale from across time. In this adaptation, Director Matt Dickson was inspired by 90’s rave culture in Europe, a time and place where passion, fear, exploration and social revolution bubbled together like a faerie’s brew. In the original tale, social order and gender roles were strictly defined. Matt wished to explore and challenge these walls.

The artwork for the poster shows a figure that could be an androgynous Hermia, encircled by looming, creepy figures—perhaps Athenians. There is a contrast between the masculine and femanine; the old and the new; structure and fluidity. There is a narrative quality to the composition, but it is meant to be more of a metaphoric in-between. The feelings that arise from looking at the main figure’s semi-erotic expression, as well as imagining yourself in their shoes at the foot of these boogeymen closing in, are enough.