Post Battle - onto the war

A fairly dramatic title but unfortunately accurate. After battling the flu the last few days, I am back on my campaign to get A Midsummer Nights Dream to live up to its pottential. There has, however, been another issue thrown in to think about. While the Athenians, the Mechanicals and the set are all coming allong and progressing beautifully, an issue has been highlighted in a recent tutorial with guest tutor Gareth with the fairies that parallels a similar issue the recent AUCB production faced when the design concept was brough into question during the design stage - namely, how to avoid the issue of racism with the Indian influenced fairies in a predominantly white cast.

 

Thanks to this I have been looking more at Ashram culture in the 70's and the western migration to India. This has let me to a more cohesive look with the fairies that I hope will negate the racism issue, while still holding to the Indian influence that Ken hoped for. The only issue I can see is they have moved slightly further away from appearing otherworldly. This could be a problem but I hope I have left enough of a strangeness - beyond the realm of normalcy - that this air of magic has been preserved.

 

There is one aspect of the characterisation in costume that has emerged that I feel fits wonderfully in terms of them being a blend of Greek left-wing rebels and magical beings recently from India - dreadlocks. Initially I was not sure if this would work as the characters of the fairies have not - to my knowledge - been portrayed this way before, but the more I thought about it and sketched, the more it makes sense. They are fairies, they are rebellious and outside any form of human society, why should they try and be neat barring there own vanity? In my interpretation they have dreadlocks, interwoven with leaves and flowers and gold decorations, things they have picked up and fancied for themseles. Titania has a head piece that goes with this - a gold stylised peacock feather with a jewel for the 'eye' of the feather. The gold in this also picks up the gold of the gold henna I have used on the skin of both Oberon and Puck, as I feel not only will this beautifully contrast with the skin of the actors but also highlight the majesty and otherworldliness of the characters.

 

Now that these have truly started to come together I can start on the fairy dancers. After consulting with Kenneth our director it has been agreed that as I had hoped the ASM's who are being fairy dancers will remain as fairies for the duration of the performance.

There is a specific reason that I wanted this. The AMS's will be visible on stage at various points in the production moving props and set pieces, changing the worlds from Athens to the fairy wood and back, though not all the way, and it struck me that this is what the fairies do. They invade the human world and set about changing things, altering and creating havoc and mischief. On explaining my reasoning to Kenneth he agreed that this was a good idea and made a lot of sense, so I now have four fairy ASM's to make into fairies.