This is the set for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream which I directed in Allen Hall Theatre in 1987. The audience sit on three sides of the performance space - my favourite space configuration for Shakespeare! The yellow painted circle on the floor represents the moon, reflected from the sky - after all, this play is set in the nightime secret world of dreams. The scaffolding structure provides the actors with opportunity for scrambling, climbing, entangling, observing and hiding.

Here, Oberon (upper left) and Puck watch the havoc they have caused amongst the various pairs of lovers start to take effect. Since Puck is capable of being virtually everywhere at once ("I'll put a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes"), I had three actors playing the role of Puck simultaneously, each with different personality traits. All the fairies wear hand painted working overalls in "Harlequin" style, to suggest an affinity with the clowns of commedia dell'arte.

Puck: I'll follow you; I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar . . . (III.i)

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