Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: 6 Arno Declair, 200 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
Photo: Arno Declair, 2006 
 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

by William Shakespeare
Direction/Choreography: Thomas Ostermeier, Constanza Macras

German translation by Frank Günther
Co-Production by the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin and the Hellenic Festival Athen 2006

»You’ve left the city behind you, where people sit next to one another in the subway like sardines, and yet are worlds apart because there is a tacit boundary so that the animal won’t break through, whoever puts his hand on his neighbor’s thigh is obsessed, or insane, or asleep, so you go to find the forest, your animal needs the forest because you must wipe away these boundaries, your body is pumping its own substances into your blood, and if that’s not enough you will put some in from outside, creating your own interior forest, where you forget your name and who and what you are, how old, a man or woman, neither, human, animal, or perhaps a fungus? In your high everything is a blur, you let yourself melt into it, no matter what will become of you, you try on various people just as long as you’re rid of yourself, in bed everyone’s the same, career, money, no matter, you take off your skin and try another one on, I’ll take yours, you take mine, no one will notice the difference, weren’t you just my man, and I your woman? Now it’s the other way around, or did you leave me for a sheep, or is it a donkey or a frog, who are you now? The high has burned you down, and you’re helplessly look-ing for yourself.« The first collaboration between Thomas Ostermeier and Constanza Macras is an evening about loss of identity and sex.

Author: William Shakespeare
Direction / Choreography: Constanza Macras, Thomas Ostermeier
Stage design: Jan Pappelbaum
Costume design: Ulrike Gutbrod
Music: Chris Dahlgren, Maurice De Martin, Alex Nowitz
Music arrangements: Chris Dahlgren
Dramaturgy: Marius von Mayenburg
Light design: Erich Schneider
Duration: ca. 110 minutes(without interval)

Premiered on 2 September 2006