Athenian romance to play out in New Farm Park
By Kate Lockyer
None other than “bard core”, Renaissance-style pop music with lutes and flutes, in five-part harmony, will be filling the air in New Farm Park for a contemporary staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Rhona Bechaz, co-founder of Vox Theatre Arts, is the show’s Artistic Director, and said she wants to bring the magic of the show to life in the park, with the action staged around one particular fig tree near the rotunda.
“Honestly the park is the most beautiful backdrop for the show… the play itself is set entirely in the forest,” she said.
Lovers of the modern Bridgerton or & Juliet soundtracks will fall for the music, sung by the fairies of the forest under the musical direction of Emma Parkinson.
While the original show has no music written into it, the fairies are known to sing and dance, and Ms Bechaz said in Shakespeare’s time the performances would have had a lot of variety, with a lot of productions since also staging it with music.
She cannot wait for the audience to see the cast’s interpretations of the show, and said they are all “such gorgeous, talented people”.
“A lot of our story is devised by getting our cast to improvise non-scripted action, and they are just so giving with their offers and have come up with incredible characterisation.
“The parts that we absolutely cannot stop laughing at are often the parts that they’re making up themselves.
“There are great relationships between the cast, so they bounce off each other so beautifully,” she said.
While they have loved rehearsing in the sunshine each Sunday at New Farm Park, Ms Bechaz describing it as “basically like a picnic”, the outdoor space has had its challenges too.
The acoustics of the park are very different to a theatre, and so the cast must project their vocals further, as well as adapting to using the natural ground as the stage.
A territorial noisy minor bird they have named Dave has been a disruptive audience member in their rehearsals, and Ms Bechaz joked they have been finding ways to “appease” Dave.
Vox Theatre Arts was co-founded as a community-run indie theatre company that centres on inclusion, and this will be their second show.
Ms Bechaz said they want to focus on a variety of productions, including plays, musicals, cabarets, and burlesque, and they want to hear from artists who have suggestions on what they should do next.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be the inaugural production of their Shakespeare in Bloom series, which they hope to run annually in New Farm Park.
To purchase tickets visit trybooking.com/CSOQC, or to learn more visit Vox’s website voxtheatrearts.com.
