A (Ukranian) Midsummer Night's Dream

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

The Finborough Theatre’s new digital initiative #FinboroughFrontier continues with a unique adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in Ukrainian with English intertitles, premiering FREE-TO-VIEW on the Finborough YouTube channel on Monday, 30 January at 6.00pm, and concurrently on Scenesaver.

Four young Athenians, two young lovers, and two unrequited loves.

At the orders of her father, a young Athenian finds herself forced to marry a man she does not love. In a bid for love and freedom, the couple run away in the night, only to find themselves caught up in the middle of a quarrel within the fairy kingdom, a comedic rehearsal of terrible tragedy and all at the hands of a mischievous fairy.

Aileen Gonsalves of Butterfly Theatre Collective says:
“The war in Ukraine feels so beyond comprehension. Everywhere destruction, heartbreak and huge losses. We at Butterfly were working with these talented Ukrainian artists when the invasion of Ukraine began. We watched them scatter across Europe. We also heard them say how they needed to keep practicing their art and bringing some joy to their fellow Ukrainians across the world. So, we helped them create this online production.

The Stage UA actors are in now spread across Kyiv, Odessa, Spain, Germany, France and Bulgaria. They will share with us their acting and creative talents, despite the adversity they are facing, and catapult you into a beautiful and magical world through Zoom. Creativity thrives from constraints, and the creativity in this production of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy, will make you feel joyous at its inventiveness. Join us for this truly unique, magical and live theatrical experience!

This unique online production will allow audiences from all over the world to come together and communicate through theatre, despite our differences, struggles, separation, and find connection as we look with hope towards a brighter future – as Shakespeare always reminds us “this too shall pass”.”

Neil McPherson of the Finborough Theatre says:
“We are very happy indeed to be able to collaborate with Butterfly Theatre Collective and Stage UA to help provide a platform for this truly unique merging of theatre and digital creativity as part of our #VoicesFromUkraine series.”

Available FREE TO VIEW on the Finborough Theatre YouTube channel #FinboroughFrontier.

All videos are free to view but we do ask for donations for The Voices of Children Foundation, a Ukrainian charity providing urgently needed psychological and psychosocial support to children affected by the war in Ukraine. More information can be found here.

Available from Monday, 30 January 2023 at 6.00pm
Simultaneously available free on Scenesaver here.
Performance Length: 2 hours.

#FINBOROUGHFRONTIER
During lockdown, our acclaimed #FinboroughForFree series released monthly free-to-view archive recordings and original online content including new plays, rediscoveries, a community festival, and the Finborough Forum, our invitation-only group for theatre creatives. Our online work saw us awarded London Pub Theatres’ Award for Pub Theatre of the Year 2020, and our web series Late Night Staring At High Res Pixels won London Pub Theatres Standing Ovation Award for Best Online Theatre 2021. We strongly believe that online work is an exciting new complement to our work, and are anxious to explore this new medium, embracing anything that can be presented digitally including film, livestream, audio, and hybrid. We are especially keen to develop digital work to increase our international engagement, and also to ensure that our work is truly available for everyone, especially those who cannot easily access our auditorium. Since January 2022, we have continued our online work under a brand new name – #FinboroughFrontier, curated by Artistic Director Neil McPherson and Playwright-in-Residence Athena Stevens. All our online content will remain – as it was throughout lockdown – entirely free to view, and also be available in a subtitled version. Our first releases, earlier this year, were An Earls Court Miscellany, a celebration of the vivid history and personalities of Earl’s Court featuring poetry, prose and music, and filmed in the local area, and How To Make A Revolution by Einat Weizman with Issa Amro, a verbatim documentary play filmed in the UK and Hebron.

#VoicesFromUkraine #Українськіголоси #Ukrayinsʹkiholosy
Previous releases in the #VoicesFromUkraine #Українськіголоси #Ukrayinsʹkiholosy include Otvetka by Neda Nezhdana, He Who Opens The Door by Neda Nezhdana, The Peed-Upon Armored Personnel Carrier by Oksana Gritsenko, A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War by Yelena Astasyeva, and director Polly Creed interviewing Tetyana Filevska and Karina Sabri. All are now available on the Finborough Theatre YouTube channel, and available with subtitles on Scenesaver.

Live productions included Two Ukrainian Plays featuring Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha in a double bill with Neda Nezhdana’s monologue Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, pairing Ukraine’s leading contemporary playwright together with a Ukrainian playwright making her UK debut, which played at the Finborough Theatre in August.