Director's notes

Dream is a comedy about love.

The arrow Cupid fires at the fair vestal had struck a white flower, turning it red, as Oberon recounts. And in this way the arrow’s curving path spans the world of comedy.

The passage is violent.

The traditional opening scene of various couples in love, troubled by the pale rays of the moon, is upset by the arrival of the Princes of the night, restless spirits who bring the forest alive with their mischief.

Victims of passions unloosed by their spells, Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius have their amorous intentions turned upside down in a brutal game of mistaking one person for another. Not even Titania, Queen of the fairies, is immune from this insidious bewitchment and is entranced and undone by her dream of love for a donkey.

Only with the return of the light of day will the monsters of the night be chased away and harmony re-established.

The arrow which tinges the entire world of the play is the key to the idea behind the show: the dramatic metamorphosis of form, colour and sound which accompanies love on its journey through the dark animal kingdom and reveals the marvellous confusion - and distance - between a dream and reality.

Maria Grazia Cipriani