Spend Midsummer Online with The Royal Shakespeare Company

Oberon wakes Titania as Bottom sleeps in her bower and Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia sleep on their trapezes in Peter Brook’s 1970 Royal Shakespeare Co. production of Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford-on-Avon. Photo: Joe Cocks

This summer marks the 40th production of Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).
To celebrate RSC has announced “a ground breaking digital theatre project –Midsummer Night’s Dreaming – in partnership with Google Creative Lab.”

Here is what’s going on:

Across Midsummer weekend (21 – 23 June) the play will be performed by an acting company in real time… culminating in a wedding, which you can attend.
Meanwhile, the story will be shared through photos, snippets and news stories online from the perspectives of some lesser known characters, as if it was happening in real life. After the event, we will release an audio recording of A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed by the acting company, which will be annotated with content created by commissioned artists and audiences over the weekend and posted on Google+.

To stay plugged in and “be the first to hear updates as the story happens” you’ll need to join the Midsummer Night’s Dreaming Google+ community

You are also encouraged to respond to the play. “You could invent a whole new character and play along for three whole days, or you could just write a newspaper headline. Or make a song, draw a comic, or bake cupcakes, or do a dance, or knit one of the characters a scarf. It is a world of opportunity.”

And if that’s not enough to pique your interest then this trailer featuring Billy Shakespeare and his pet pig Francis giving you their take on the plot just might.

Finally, here is a recent piece in The Guardian by Peter Brook as he looks back at his seminal 1970 RSC production.

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