A Midsummer Night's Dream 2011

What happens when we leave our own daily reality and visit a foreign land where the rules and structures are different? New and exotic places offer us a chance to re-imagine ourselves and to experiment with new experiences. They have a way of imprinting their own reality onto ours. And when we return to our lives, are we changed? Or do we return to the status quo? These questions lay at the heart of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, as we followed four young lovers and the beloved Bottom into the woods where they encountered the mysterious, magical world of the fairies.

UWaterloo’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was set in post WWII and tracked the ‘dream’ of the baby boomers. From the conformism and consumerism of the 1950’s , we travelled through the ‘woods’ to the counter culture of the 1960’s and the advent of celebrity culture, and finally ended up in the corporate culture of the late 1980’s. Using the stunning visual world of hippie culture as a backdrop, much fun and confusion ensued.