A Midsummer Night's Dream

Première 2019
Running time 1 hour 50 minutes. No interval.
+ post-performance talk 
Performance is in Croatian with Slovenian summary.

Director Kristina Grubiša
Dramaturge Antonela Tošić
Lighting designer Martin Šatović
Costume designers Martina Ptičar, Dina Kundih (TTF)
Photographer Urh Pirc
Poster designer Ana-Marija Jadanec
Producer Marta Radoš

Cast
Ružica Maurus, Nika Barišić, Lara Nekić, Vid Ćosić, Antonio Agostini, Filip Lugarić

Mentors
Class of assoc. prof. ma. Rene Medvešek, asst. Sara Stanić
Directing prof. ma. Ozren Prohić, assoc. prof. Tomislav Pavković
Dramaturgy doc. Tomislav Zajec
Light design assoc. prof. Deni Šesnić
Costume design doc. phd. Ivana Bakal (TTF), assoc. prof. Irena Sušac, asst. Petra Drenski (ADU)
Production doc. Tatjana Aćimović

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dynamic, playful, impetuous, fairy-tale hymn of life through a series of errors, substitutions, disappointments and magical interventions. The play by William Shakespeare (1564‒1616) was written around 1595, probably by request. He drew from many sources: he found fairy tales in English folk tradition, love complications in Canterbury Tales by medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer, ancient motifs in Plutarch's Parallel Lives and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
It depicts love delusions, complications and substitutions in the forest of Athens, the shelter of fairy-tale creatures, where escaped young lovers are lost and mixed. The events are interfered with by the love plot in the fairyland, in the same forest, the craftsmen rehears to stage "the most lamentable comedy" at the wedding of Athenian Duke Theseus; the nightly action takes place between wakefulness and sleep.
In man’s dream, as in Shakespeare's forest on a midsummer night, real and unreal images overlap and overflow. When trying to explain the dream, one discovers curious meanings which are later recognized as logical pieces of awake life, because "we are such stuff as dreams are made on" (Prospero, The Tempest). Therefore, the naughty Puck rounds the story well: "If we shadows have offended,/ think but this, and all is mended,/ that you have but slumbered here/ while these visions did appear./ And this weak and idle theme, / no more yielding but a dream, /…/"