A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Space

A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Space | Premiere: 2018 | Clipa Theater (Clipa 37), Tel Aviv

“A bold, intelligent and creative work of art. It is possible to write a complete seminar about it, analyzing every nuance and choice.
And you can just run to see it. In fact, it’s a must.” (Ha’aretz)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Space highlights the side plot of the Mechanicals, a play-within-a-play, as Shakespeare’s hallucinogenic comedy was performed independently in the course of the English Civil War. Accompanied by stunts, it intended to offer instant gratification to an impatient audience without being dragged into the many complex plot twists and love affairs of the original play.

The Mechanicals’ plotline tells of a group of skilled craftsmen but incompetent actors, who prepare to perform at the royal wedding of the Duke and Queen, but fall victim to fairies, magic and seduction.

The craftsmen, whose professions have lost their relevance or existence in today’s society, have been replaced by characters of popular entertainment culture. They are being sent on a mission to perform their play in space and connect with intelligent life forms.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Space embraces bad taste in all its artistic choices in order to experience and question the deceitfulness and vividness of theater, presenting a play-within-a-play to fool us to the fullest, in the way we believe Shakespeare intended to.

Accompanied by love dolls and sex toys as stage props, the adaptation brazenly examines the attraction between pop culture and the billion-dollar porn industry, creeps into the perversions and distortions that result from consumer culture, and raises the price that humankind is required to pay to eliminate the final frontier of imagination and fantasy. Can it be called evolution?

If the reality we live in is the most absurd dream, then A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Space is the most logical and reasonable possibility of escapism.

The show includes nudity and sexual content and is intended for an adult audience (age 18+).

Direction: Ariel Bronz & Idit Herman | Adaptation and writing: Ariel Bronz | Set and costume design: Idit Herman | Original cast: Ziv Barashi, Ariel Bronz, Or Butbul, Aram Rabinovitch, Reut Rivka, Kazuyo Shionoiri, Gal Volinez, Oded Zadok | Music director: Hever Perlmutter | Music: Ziv Barashi, Felix Mendelssohn, Hever Perlmutter, Reut Rivka | Movement and choreography: Artour Astman | Light design: Yanir Liberman