Melodeclamation in the Queen’s Garden - 5pm teatime!
An interview with Martin Cooke, Director of William Shakespeare’s
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
https://www.facebook.com/events/751555648339749/
Tell us about the Shakespeare project?
We’re taking the stories from Shakespeare and turning them into
melodeclamation pieces.
“Melo” what, pieces?
Melodeclamation is a technique which combines music and dramatic
recitation. It is related to earlier forms of melodrama which were
created to subvert the prohibition against theatre declared by Oliver
Cromwell. Theatre of love, have been experimenting with synthesizing
electronic music with contemporary and classical poetry for several
years and we have now broadened our interest into classical drama and
longer forms of poetry. This is the second year of our development.
Sounds intense – is it?
It’s very accessible – that’s the point. To use every devise necessary as a
means to tell the story. Being native speaker guests in Russia we decided to
combine acting with music, dance, action-theatre,
puppetry, live painting and pantomime to underline and exposit, in
every conceivable way, these brilliant tales from Shakespeare, using the
original beautiful language.
What kind of music?
Organized collections of sound rendered in the most contemporary
manner, derived from traditional and avante garde sources. Music is
the miracle of our shows – The Midsummer Night’s Dream score was
originally written by the Moscow conservatoire’s enfant terrible, Alexei
Steblev. Mr. Steblev’s score for quartet was subsequently rendered into
electronic form and re-interperted by the superb, contemporary
electronic composer, Sergei Taff. Additional songs were written by Olga
Lisikova and Dan Medved. It’s a really wonderful score and something
we are very proud of. The recording will be available on a special Artifex
app as an interactive audio play.
Do the plays work?
It’s interesting too see them as performance art pieces at least,
– our events are like what used to - give it a try
come to one of our “happenings.”
We are playing midsummer nights dream in
the Queen’s Garden at the Anglican Church on Voznesenski pereolok on
June 10 th . It will be a lot of fun and very cool. Buckets of champagne and
picnic hampers. We really hope people will catch the inspiration to
dress up and chill out.
Anyone can come?
We do a lot of theatre for children so our events are always family
friendly – I like to see an eclectic audience and I love to see children at
our Shakespeare shows. My own children aged 3 and 8 will be there.
Will children enjoy our “every means necessary” style? Children are
hard to fool so I hope they like it too! The set and costumes are fun.
Brilliant designer and “interested artist” Irina Savina is be in charge of
that dept. Come into the garden, enjoy a paradise spectacle! No fairies
were harmed in the making of this production! The play lasts one hour
and youy are welcome to hang around before and after to enjoy
champagne and nibbles in the Queen’s Garden. We’ll be running inside
if it starts to snow!
Martin Cooke, was interviewed by M.H. Elfsie.
https://www.facebook.com/events/751555648339749/
poster design by Irina Savina.
http://flyingbananas.ru/shows/midsummer-night-s-dream.html
