Context: This is a play full of opportunity for a designer. It is about imagination and a dreamworld so there are few boundaries. Some designers have focused on the forest atmosphere, some on the psychological world of dreaming. In 1900 Beerbohm Tree used a lavish naturalistic forest set and live rabbits! In 1986 Bill Alexander made the fairies look smaller by placing a huge delicate spider's web as a background. In 1989 John Caird's fairies lived in a scrapyard.
The freedom for design has led to the play being interpreted many times on film, often with extravagant flowers and undergrowth such as in Max Reinhardt's 1935 version. The play has also been staged as a ballet and a 2005 BBC Shakespeare Retold version set it in a holiday park environment called 'Dreamparks'.
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