Ein Sommernachtstraum (A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM)

As night falls, a daughter receives a death threat from her father. As a result, there are two couples wandering aimlessly around the forest of Athens, where gender-ambiguous fairies cast a spell to make them fall in love with other people. Elsewhere in the woods, some labourers are rehearsing a tragic play with a lion that that is required to not be too fearsome. And as the king and queen of the fairies quarrel about an Indian boy, they make the rivers burst their banks …

Shakespeare’s 400-year-old play A MIDSUMMERNIGHT’S DREAM has a lot to say about our crisis-ridden present-day world. The climate disasters of the time, patriarchal systems resisting gender-fluid identities, and even trigger warnings in theatre productions – all of these topics can be found in Shakespeare’s most-performed comedy. At the same time, it is a timeless piece about theatre and the power of transformation. In the forest of Athens, one person’s dream becomes another’s nightmare. Shakespeare evokes a nocturnal state of mind in which people no longer trust others and start to question their feelings and things they believe to be true. They move through all the types of love and struggle to find words. As this excessive dream night draws to a close, the couples shamefacedly awake from this “alternate universe”. But not all of them will change back. The magic of theatre continues to exist and is full of hope.