A Midsummer Night's Dream
By William Shakespeare · The Tower Theatre, Folkestone
| A Midsummer Night's Dream | |
.jpg) A Midsummer Night's Dream promotional image | |
| Production Details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | 15–17 May 2025 |
| Venue | The Tower Theatre |
| Director | Graham Jeffery |
| Writer | William Shakespeare |
| Producer | Karen Prineas |
| Choreographer | Natalie Cornish (Movement Director) |
The Folkestone-Hythe Operatic and Dramatic Society presented William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream on 15th–17th May 2025 at The Tower Theatre, Folkestone.
Foreword
It started with a thought. An inkling. How would the Fairies present Shakespeare's funniest, most enchanting comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream? Would it be a most rare vision? A thing full of mirth and magic? The summer solstice has long been celebrated with bonfires, feasting and merrymaking; midsummer is the night of the year when magical thinking is given full rein, so why not let the spirit world take flight?
So, the thought became an idea and then turned into a Dream — the Dream you are about to share. However, to make Dreams come true takes others who share the vision and I have been blessed with a true Dream team, both onstage and off. To the entire cast and crew I say thank you for sharing the magic, for bringing your exceptional talents to create a very good piece of work, and a merry. I would like to give special thanks to Karen and Natalie for their help and support. They stopped the Dream becoming a nightmare!
Thank you also, dear reader, for sharing our Dream with us. And remember; if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.
Enjoy the magic.
- Graham Jeffery, Director
About the Play
One of Shakespeare's most popular and widely performed plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream is set in Athens and in the nearby forest. The play consists of several interconnecting plots, overarched by the celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen Hippolyta. Most of the action occurs in the magical woodland realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon. One theme involves conflict and confusion among four Athenian lovers while another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they hope to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by Fairies who manipulate the humans, while the Fairy King and Queen, Oberon and Titania, are engaged with their own domestic problems.
The play was written around 1595/6 when Shakespeare had probably already completed Romeo and Juliet and, although it is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was first performed, it was possibly written as an entertainment for an aristocratic wedding. It would certainly have been performed at The Theatre and, later, at The Globe. Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known pieces from his suite of incidental music to the play.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II Scene I
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. His known works consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three long narrative poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later.
Shakespeare's early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and he then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in English. In 1623, two fellow actors and friends published a definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works including 36 of his plays. Its preface includes a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival, who hailed Shakespeare with the now-famous epithet: not of an age, but for all time.
Cast
Production Team
Direction & Production
- Director – Graham Jeffery
Movement DirectorDesign & Technical
- Lighting Design & Operation – Chris Willcox
SoundMedia & Marketing
- Illustration & Marketing – Maisie Mason
Artwork / Graphic Design