Multi award-winning ensemble The Faction return with their unique and magical take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Renowned for their intelligent interrogation of classic texts combined with powerful group physicality, this new production will be a fresh look at one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies.
Re-examining the linguistic detail of Shakespeare’s verse, The Faction create unforgettable visual moments, unleashing the magic, energy and mayhem of this work, from the raw power of the fairies' rituals to an ass's head created entirely from the ensemble’s arms and fingers.
One Midsummer's night, four young lovers, six local tradespeople and an entire kingdom of warring fairies descend upon the Athenian woods. This production will take advantage of the beautiful architecture of Wilton's Music Hall, fusing the character of the building with the design of the set.
Examining the intricacies of the text and stripping audiences of their preconceptions, The Faction will explore the aftermath of war and the sexual and power politics at play in this complex comedy. Doubling will be used to highlight the mirroring across the Athenian, Mechanical and Fairy worlds with doubles chosen through intense scrutiny of the text to bring out new interpretations of each character. The show will present a new interpretation of the fairies, creating innovative and muscular characterisations that will step away from the traditional presentations of the Fairy world.
Director Mark Leipacher comments, We're living in a really strange time of social upheaval and paradigm shifts in our society. That's true too of the world of A Midsummer Night's Dream – Shakespeare's text gives us evidence of a war just finished, unemployment, the climate changing, all the time a royal wedding is on every mind. Out of that emerges this extraordinarily joyful comedy. The show is about genuine mayhem – the excuse to go off the rails for two hours or so and then, at the end of a dream that's both funny and disturbing, re-emerge into reality a little bit altered.
The Faction have a diverse, representative and balanced company with 50:50 gender parity on stage. In this production this will be achieved through the re-gendering of Puck.
Terrifically fresh in its stripped back inventiveness [...] exhilarating. (The Independent on The Faction’s Twelfth Night).
Performance dates Tuesday 26th – Saturday 30th June 2018
Tuesday – Saturday, 7.30pm
Thursday & Saturday, 2.30pm
Running time 2 hours 15 minutes (including 15 minute interval)
Location Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, London E1 8JB
How to get there Wilton’s Music Hall is just a short walk from Tower Hill, Aldgate East and Shadwell. The closest rail station is Fenchurch Street.
Box office Tickets are available from £12.50. Available from the Wilton’s Music Hall box office, www.wiltons.org.uk or 020 7702 2789.
Twitter @_The_Faction, @WiltonMusicHall, #AMND, #daretodream
Director Mark Leipacher
Producer Rachel Valentine Smith
Designer Eleanor Field
Lighting Ben Jacobs
Sound Yaiza Varona
Stage Management Rachel Pryce
The Faction
The Faction is an award-winning ensemble reinventing classics for 21st century. They have been training and collaborating together since 2008. Their shared history and continual development gives their work a unique theatrical and physical language that is inhabited by every ensemble member. The collective voice and kinetic energy of their ensemble resonates with their audiences in all of their work.
Key to their productions is looking for secrets in the text and interrogating the written word as an ensemble, embracing everyone’s perspective, searching for new details, and always making unexpected discoveries.
Their signature stripped-back aesthetic places the actors at the centre of the empty space, and the ensemble’s innovative and dynamic physicality creates the world of the play. By releasing these texts in exciting and unexpected ways, they provoke the imagination of their audience members, inviting them to see these plays as if for the first time.
Focusing on the classics which have epic scale, intimate detail, rich language, powerful imagery, and enduring themes. These classics are both subjective and universal, relevant to our own experience and applicable to everyone.
