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A Midsummer Night's Dream

New York, NY

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' set.

Theater

Lear deBessonet, founder of the Public Theater’s Public Works program and resident director, brought her eclectic theatrical vision of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the 2017 season of Shakespeare in the Park at Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Following the director’s interpretation of the fairies and the forest as ancient entities, Rockwell Group took design cues from the very location of the play itself: the trees of Central Park, but aged hundreds of years.

Client
The Public Theater
Project Category
Theater
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' stage performance.

An aged forest rooted in fantastical realism

The play begins in the Court, with curving masonry walls blocking the forest beyond. The gates turn to the back of the stage, revealing a cluster of trees 76 feet wide and 25 feet tall.

Puck and Oberon watch the lovers Paul Warchol 17 16 506B (9)
Detail of trees and slide from the set of 'Midsummer Night's Dream'.
Moonshine & Lion are seen during the performance of the Mechanicals Play performed for the duke of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' Joan Marcus Midsummer0690r (3)
Over 4,500 silk flowers in hues of pink, violet, red and yellow create a magical setting.

During the wedding, the palace walls covered in blankets of peonies and bougainvillea rotate into view as a 70-foot tall festoon of lanterns rises into the night sky.

Paul Warchol AMND Detail (6)
Titania and Oberon Paul Warchol 17 16 506B (5)
Oberon prepares to wake Titania from her dream as she slumbers with her Fancied Bottom on her flowery Bower Paul Warchol 17 16 408B
Treehouse model detail from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.