Auditioning over 800 actors, dancers, martial arts experts, musicians and street acrobats from across India and Sri Lanka was the starting point for Tim Supple’s visionary production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - a co-production between Dash Arts and the British Council. The play offers a faithful translation of Shakespeare’s original text and is performed in a mixture of seven languages: Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Sinhalese and English.

Following two months of rehearsals in Southern India and a highly acclaimed tour of India’s major cities, the 23 strong cast and creative team will arrive in the UK next month to perform their version of Dream as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival.

Drawing on the rich diversity of contemporary India, the production borrows practices from both modern and traditional Indian theatre and storytelling. Through a combination of vivid physical theatre, music and performance, mythic warriors, lovers, artisans and spirits combine in Shakespeare’s masterpiece about social conventions and the madness of love.

Tim Supple said: “India is a hybrid of a dazzling range of influences and so is Shakespeare. I hope you can expect a Dream that is constantly alive, never predictable, always honest, told as if for the first time and performed by an ensemble that in itself offers an experience of the breadth of humanity on show in the fiction of the play”.

The cast includes Ajay Kumar (Puck and Philostrate);Yuki Ellias (Hermia); Archana Ramaswamy (Titania/ Hippolyta); P R Jijoy (Oberon/Theseus); Joy Fernandes (Bottom), Chandan Roy Sanyal (Lysander); Shanaya Rafaat (Helena) Prasanna Mahagamage (Demetrius); Ashwarthama JD (Peter Quince); D Padmakumar (Fairy); Dharminder Pawar ; (Fairy); J Jayakumar (Egeus/Fairy); M Palani (Fairy); Jitu Shastri (Snug); Ram Pawar (Boy); Tapan Das (Fairy); Umesh Jagtap (Snout); D. Prakash (Musician); Joyraj Bhattacharya (Francis Flute); Kaushik Dutta (Musician); N.Tiken Singh (Musician); T. Gopalakrishnan (Robin Starveling); and Faezeh Jalali (Fairy).

Joining Tim Supple on the creative team are: Sumant Jayakrishnan who has designed both the set and costume design; Zuleykha Chaudhari who has designed the lighting; and Devissaro whose original music is played live by three of Indian’s leading theatre musicians.

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