Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, The

Synopsis: A near-complete version of the play using 350 children from primary schools in Southwark, with no acting experience, as cast, extras and behind-the-scenes helpers. Designed, directed and filmed by Christine Edzard in her studio on Rotherhide. It begins with a group of contemporary schoolchildren watching lifesize puppets perform the play, and gradually some turn into characters they identify with, acting it out in an enchanted wood. Filmed around schoolwork over a period of nine months.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Film
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Year of release: 2002
Duration: 118 mins; 10.644 feet

Production type: Fiction Films
Historical period: Elizabethan
Plays: Midsummer Night’s Dream, A
Subjects: Drama
Keywords: drama in education; schoolchildren; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Multicultural casting; Untrained actors

Notes: Budget $1.2
Documentation: Reviewed in the TLS, 29/6/2001
Reviews: `Producing The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (2001): A Discussion with Oliver Stockman’. in Hatchuel, Sarah & Vienne-Guerrin, Nathalie (eds). Shakespeare on Screen: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2004, pp115-28. [Includes comments on the children’s experience as actors, the generational and racial codes of the play, and the ethical issue surrounding enlisting untrained children to speak the complicated and sometimes sexually charged lines of Shakespeare’s play without understanding them].

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British Universities Film & Video Council