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Hamlet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Home | A Midsummer Night's Dream: Staging choices | The detail of the forest

Staging choices

Stage design
Costume
Make-up and transformation
Doing the fairies
Puppetry: the
changeling boy

The detail of the forest

Who's this? Stephen Brimson Lewis is the designer.

What do you think? Should this forest have trees? Should they look like real trees? In Richard Jones' 2001 production the forest was represented by one huge tree played by an actor. He could grasp the actors in his branches like the stuff of nightmares. But there is often no sign of trees at all. Peter Brook's famous 1970 production created a simple white box with the fairies on trapezes. In 1994 Adrian Noble paid tribute to this using a coloured box, a swing and magical doors; Titania's bower was an upturned pink umbrella.

Stage design

The design process
Creating a night sky
The world of the play
The detail of the forest
See the stage designs
Detail on other RSC productions
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