Shakespeare’s classic comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is reawakened in Bell Shakespeare’s breathless production brimming with magic, mirth and mayhem.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was set to travel to 26 venues across Australia between July and November this year.
Due to health orders and travel restrictions, many of these performances were cancelled including in Orange, Griffith, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Lismore, Port Macquarie, Nowra, Warrnambool, Bendigo, Mildura, Warragul, Shepparton, Wangaratta, Albany, Bunbury and Perth. Thankfully, the cast was able to complete quarantine in Howard Springs in late August, which has enabled performances to proceed in Darwin, Mackay, Cairns, Rockhampton, Gladstone, and Cleveland. Performances are also scheduled for additional dates in Hobart and Launceston.
“This show has been made before but was being rebuilt from a technical and design perspective,” added lighting designer Ben Cisterne. “That meant I knew some of the challenges they had had in the past and how physical the performers would be climbing around the set! The brief with Director Pete Evans is always go with the flow of the rehearsal room. Everything comes from that collaborative space so you just have to roll with it. A place needs to be created with what is available to tour with and will fit on the side of the stage …. so the lighting design needs to be flexible right up to the opening. Nothing is set till it has been run and evaluated.”
As the whole rig is toured, Ben designed a self-contained touring package that creates great variety and a concise bold look for the show.
“That said, we also wanted it to be accessible and given it is Midsummer Night’s Dream there are so many chances to go overboard,” said Ben. “And we did at times but we tried to find a good balance to allow an audience not to be overwhelmed by the crazy fairy-land but to simply enjoy being in it for, possibly the first time since Covid-19 hit the industry and cancelled whatever they were going to see that week.”
Ben’s biggest challenge was coming up with a consolidated kit of parts that would give him enough variety with the least fixture types.
“This show tours like crazy and I wanted the team on the road to have a simple set of fixtures that could be inter swapped when necessary,” he explained. “I worked through a few iterations before coming to the final design. It has four fixture types and the focus, although structured for the blocking, allows for the loosing of a fixture and the swap in of another. It is scalable within its limits and that is so important with a one day in and show.”
The main set piece is a big wall, made of wooden slats, that leans forward over the performance space and the performers enter through it and climb all over it. The lean of the wall is an interesting challenge for Ben as it means you can’t use overhead lighting at all. It is also pretty tight to get side lighting to it so he ended up putting a line of Gantom Lighting Precision Z in the top of the structure pointing back into it.
“This worked a charm,” Ben added. “The shot was contained within the set and you absolutely could not tell from the auditorium where the source was.”
Another row of Gantom Precision Z lights is located downstage as pin spot footlights for specific moments. Bell Shakespeare’s custom LED white floods form another row of footlights. Behind the set as a big backlight coming through the slats are three rows of Vari-lite SL Bars. Nine ETC Lustrs are positioned out front of house (focused in a 3 x 3 very soft front light) and there’s a 3/4 backlight from each side with four ETC Lustrs per side. These sit at about the same height as the set. There is a heap of haze so the tone of the show really comes from the colour in the atmosphere.
Knowing the show was going to be out on tour for the first run, Ben prepped the full show in Capture.
“That was great and I am pretty committed to working that way these days,” he said. “I like to have time in the venue to play with stuff and see what appears. Having a pre-plot allows me this freedom. I have to say that Capture really worked well – it got the look pretty close and given that I was trialling a new and quite bold colour concept at the show, it was good for Pete to see that prior to plot.”
The show was plotted in Chatswood, Sydney just as Covid-19 was hitting and lockdown meant not going to the first venue.
“Well that was pretty crazy, plotting a show with no audience at the end of the week!” remarked Ben. “I had a fantastic board op on the ETC EOS; he was fast and responsive to the changes along the way which you need to be with Pete and myself. At the end, we had a pretty tight show ready for tour …. packed into a truck and waiting to go!”
Ben says he’s got to give it up for the cast and crew who quarantined and eventually got the show on the road outside of locked-down areas.
