Premiere with Szigligeti Company

Szigligeti Company presents the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. One of the best-known comedies by “the Swan of Avon” is put to the stage by Tarnóczi Jakab, who is about to graduate as a theatre director at the Budapest Academy of Drama and Film, along with his young team.

The well-known piece is set on Midsummer night in Athens and the forest surrounding it. The fate of fairies, the royal couple, young lovers and craftsmen are tangled in an uncanny night.

About the show, director Tarnóczi Jakab has said: “I can see the company very clearly in it, it was a pleasure to cast the roles. I am obsessed with not merging roles, the way many directors do in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so we have 17 actors in the show, which is a pretty large team. I felt it was an excellent encounter.” About the text, the director has declared the following:  “We have used the translation by Nádasdy Ádám because I believe that, on the one hand, it is the most accurate and closest to the original Shakespearean intention. On the other hand, it is closest to everyday language, which I found very important because, for example, we have a lot of improvisation in the craftsmen’s scene, which means that our own sentences have found their way into the text, and this can only work organically if our basic translation is already close to the spoken language. I think we have ended up with a very interesting script in which we have, at certain points, changed the sequence of scenes or took out some scenes that will reappear as songs, and we have quite a few parts taken from other literary texts.”

The  music is inspired, to a certain extent, from the Henry Purcell’s opera The Fairy Queen, featuring also covers of hit songs by Trabalka Cecília, who also plays Helena in the show. A particularity of this version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that a separate musical block for the scene of Pyramus and Thisbe has been composed by Selmeczi György, inspired by the musical traditions of the baroque.

Tickets for the October 19 premiere are available at the theatre’s booking office (open Monday to Friday 2pm - 7pm, as well as one hour before the start of our shows), or online, at www.biletmaster.ro. After the premiere, the show will be played at the Interethnic Theatre Festival in Odorheiu Secuiesc, folowed by two shows for youth season ticket owners in Oradea, one on 30 October, and the other one on 31 October.

 William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream

comedy

Featuring: Sebestyén Hunor Jr. Kovács Levente, Tőtős Ádám, Kiss Tamás, Pitz Melinda, Román Eszter, Trabalka Cecília, Tasnádi-Sáhy Noémi, Tóth Tünde, Fábián Enikő, Dobos Imre, Dimény Levente, Hunyadi István, Szotyori József, Kocsis Gyula, Csatlós Lóránt, Gajai Ágnes.

Directed by: Tarnóczi Jakab

Dramaturgy: Kukk Zsófia

Hungarian translation: Nádasdy Ádám

Set designer: Dabóczi Noémi

Costume designer: Giliga Ilka

Musical director: Trabalka Cecília

Musical collaborator: Brugós Anikó

Composer of the opera section: Selmeczi György

Stage manager: Joó Emília

Prompter: Țentea Katalin

Played with Romanian subtitles. For ages 12 and above.