WEEK 5 - SHAKESPEARE TODAY

Midsummer Night’s Dream - Tiff

In this modern interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the company Tiff have chosen to use lighting, colour and set as a big tool towards modernising Shakespeare’s production.

Watching the video you instantly get a feel that this interpretation is new and fresh simply by the colour palette they have chosen to use for their set. Colours such as white, black and crystal blue are used to present the cold wintery colours. This itself is quite a difference to Shakespeare’s plays as they would’ve used more earthy colours with their set and costumes e.g cream instead of white or brown instead of black. This instantly gives the contemporary audience a refreshing atmosphere as soon as they walk into the theatre.

Something that differs unusually with the modern interpretation, is that they use less set than the Shakespearean play would. Even though the amount of set they would use wasn’t an overly large amount, they would still usually hide props and set behind the stage curtains until they were needed. However in this modern interpretation you see that hardly any set is used at all and this is purely based on the fact that they can depend so much on lighting and projection.

In the video you see that the background projections help to create the scenery and adjust the mood. For example near the beginning of the clip you see that shadows and projections of branches grow around the stage to create a creepy mysterious atmosphere. They keep their use of set extremely minimal as they have the choice of using developed technology to create the illusion of set that isn’t really there.

The Shakespearean production didn’t have this option of course because of the use of advanced technology meaning they would have solely have to depend on physically having to make any set they want the audience to see. Minimalistic things even such as creating shadows would be out of the question seeing as though they didn’t have any access to lighting.

Tiff company are able to take advantage of their use of technology, put less work into creating set but having a bigger impression. Not only does this save hassle and of course quite a lot of money but this also enables the contemporary cast of performers to have more space to play about on the stage and perform. It gives the director’s a chance to completely go wild in their imagination as they are able to project literally anything they feel would help set the tone.

Twelfth Night - National Theatre

The National theatre’s modern interpretation of Twelfth Night was very bold and complex. As the show began, instantly you could tell that a lot of money had gone into creating a modern like setting with a wide range of intricate set along with a stage that was able to rotate 360 as the scene changes occurred.

Unlike the Shakesperean version, this adaptation was performed facing one direction (Thrust).

However Twelth Night when being performed in The Globe Theatre, would've still been in the same layout roughly, however still fitting in more audience members in the side section next to the stage.

In the picture above you can see that members sitting at the very sides next to the stage most likely wouldn't have been able to see much because of the restricted viewing. This wasn't at all a problem at the National Theatre as the audience members were facing the front. One restriction in the modern interpretation however was that because they fit more audience member's in, if you were sitting very far back you wouldn't be able to see much as the theatre was so big. This is a problem the Globe theatre wouldn't have experienced as their theatre isn't as large.

Another interesting adaptation of Twelfth Night that both productions used similarly, was their use of comedy. During the original performance of Twelfth Night, comedy was a lot more melodramatic. Audience members sitting at the back couldn’t see much of what the characters facial expressions were saying. Melodrama was a way of breaking the barriers of this and getting everyone to understand the comedy aspects of the play (even those sitting at the back) by over exaggerating them to a high level.

Similarly when watching the National Theatre adaptation, I felt that a lot of the comedy aspects of the play were also overplayed to a level of melodramatic acting. Physical actions were extended to an un-naturalistic level along with their voices.