Lights: the Wonder of Projections
White light, red lights, and tons of projections. This production of Midsummer Night’s Dream basically used only the lights mentioned above. However, what made it magical was how they used such lighting. When the play began, the magical, mystical, but eerie setting of the fairy realm was depicted with a soft red hue created in the background. It was the start of the play and Puck was simply waiting by the bed for the house to quiet down. The soft red that shined in the background signaled that the creature on the stage, though innocent and good also had a darker and trickster side to him- that he belonged to a group of creatures that could do both good and harm. Of course many of these emotions were developed throughout the play, but at the start of the play, the eerie aspect of the fairy world was evident.
Puck and Titania wore pale but creamy costumes, I believe, purposely for the projector’s full effect to become present. The projections- whether of flowers, grass, bamboo rods, or bats- filled the entire back wall and added to the scenery, ultimately becoming a prop in itself. The scene in which Titania is in her hammock against the back wall of the stage and reels in Bottom- who by that time was transformed to have an asses’ head- using white sheets, used a projector to display a huge flower on Titania. The mouth of the flower pointed at the audience, the purple and yellow petals, the constant moving of the projected flower as if it were sucking in Bottom– were all so beautifully intertwined to make- what could have been a very sexual and R-rated scene- into a more moderate one that still gave justice to the passionate and thus horrid love of Titania’s for Bottom with his asses’ head. I never thought a projector would be used so extensively in a play, but it was what made this performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream so memorable.
