A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lovers Performed by Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, Poland

On the afternoon of October 19th, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lovers Performed by Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, Poland in Proscenium Stage Theatre in Chang Ping campus of The Central Academy of Drama. This work is originated from A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare, with great changes in the background and in the method of expression, telling an ancient story with a highly modern way.

The six participants co-directed this theatre and composed all the music used in the performance. They chose the postmodern mode in which they added modern elements, and gave an inverted ending to the whole story. The background of the performance was changed from the forest into a pub. The directors wish to express the absurd of pursuing true love in psychedelic situation, and to make the audience think about how we should pursue our love in the high-speed modern society.

At the beginning of the performance, Puck showed up with a moon-light in his hands, and gave a monologue during which the atmosphere was made quiet and cold via the changes of the light. He also added wiggly movements to attract the audience's attention. The quiet atmosphere was soon interrupted by electronic music. The colorful costumes of actors stand for the modernization, and the wiggly movements are accord to the drumbeats, which reflects the stage setting of the performance.

The appearance of Titania was well designed. Titania was performed by a skull model with bright decorations manufactured by two actors. One in the front, holding the skull, and the other made movements behind him. They cooperated with each other and created mysterious and freaky atmosphere.

It is interesting that Oberon came on the stage as a rock singer who attracted the audience with his voice. The shadow behind the white scene danced while he was singing, making the scene absurd and complicated. All these are impressive to the audience.

As there is only six actors, they creatively wore several masks on their arms to play the role of elf, and expressed the existence of elf via different tones. When the performance was about to end, the rhythm of the twelfth scene suddenly switched from passionate to calm. The background music was no longer noisy and the actors were no longer in confrontation. While in the next scene everything returned to it was before.

The actors also used plenty of imaginary properties in details. For example, when Helena was quarrelling with the others, she was using a camera as a weapon, and all those who were set as the target made a movement of dodge. The actors mentioned that the camera is a symbol of modern media. Though the modern life is always exposed to the social media, the message received from the media does not necessarily equals the truth.