By Bernadette Rae
An undulating wooden ramp, a curious and percussive gypsy cart, and a huge wooden donkey - all part of the magic and fairy mayhem of A Midsummer Night's Dream - have appeared in the grassy spaces behind the Auckland University clock tower.
After 36 years, Auckland's outdoor summer Shakespeare almost did not happen this year. Now it's on schedule to open for a season on Friday.
Last year power cuts wiped out two-thirds of the season of Coriolanus and most of the university's Theatre Workshop's money.
The long-standing event, which has featured a Who's Who of New Zealand theatre over the years - Lisa Harrow, Raymond Hawthorne, Michael Hurst, Elizabeth McRae, Simon Prast, Mervyn Thompson, Sylvia Rands, Kevin Wilson and Oliver Driver to name just a few - is traditionally funded from the previous year's takings.
It looked as if 1998 was the end of the line.
Enter Ben Crowder and Vanessa Chapple, recent graduates of the John Bolton Theatre School in Melbourne who have already earned themselves a reputation for directing innovative theatre productions across the Tasman.
They were super-keen to direct some Shakespeare and prepared to produce "a professional work for less than professional wages."
Crowder, who came to New Zealand at the age of 16 from the Isle of Wight, completed a classics degree at Otago University and the diploma in drama at the University of Auckland, performing in summer Shakespeare's 1993 version of Much Ado About Nothing.
He spent time "wandering in India" before going to the John Bolton School.
Australian Chapple has an honours degree in psychology, a diploma in movement and dance, and a strong musical background.
Both were enthusiastic about working with young and uninitiated Auckland actors rather than known names, and undaunted by the "smaller than usual budget" for this year's production.
Ten days before Christmas A Midsummer Night's Dream went into rehearsal.
The cast already had a distinct inkling that this was to be a very different sort of experience.
CVs played no part in the audition process. Instead, Crowder and Chapple looked for creativity and how "directable" those auditioning would be. Casting within the chosen troupe took 10 days.
"A lot of actors found that scary," says Crowder.
"It is amazing how quickly people will decide how their character will be played. This way everything was open to adventure for those first 10 days, with no ego problems and no `text envy' - who has got how many lines to say. And we had at least seven and a half hours with each actor before casting.
"Some of the casting decisions eventually made were very different to what we thought from the first reading."
The roles of Bottom and Puck have gone to women, Sarah Parker and Nikki Bennett, purely on their acting qualities and without the slightest nod to sexual politics.
The directors' aim is to "tell the story as clearly as possible while allowing the actors to have fun." There will not be a lot of "unhelpful" analysis.
"We are sticking to the story and its themes of love, identity and other worlds," says Chapple. "And we are going for a classic look, timeless, no particular genre, and with simple costumes and staging."
"We want it to be magical, surprising and we want to make people laugh," says Crowder.
"We are creating something very different to the mundane world."
The talented cast is also composing the music, which has Eastern European and 1930s gospel influences.
And this Midsummer Night's Dream's fairies are not the usual "20th-century floaty preconceptions" either.
The John Bolton Theatre School's acting style has developed from the work of Jacques Le Coq. While it is frequently referred to as "physical theatre" Crowder prefers to describe it as method in which "the acting impulse comes from a physical place."
There are no lectures given at the Bolton school: all the learning is experiential. Every week the students were given a "provocation" - a theme which had to be developed into a performance which was critiqued by teachers and peers.
When Crowder and Chapple employed a similar technique to elicit fairy characters from their Auckland cast, they were initially presented with a bunch of balletic, tulle-wrapped and bespangled cliches.
But with a bit of guidance the young cast identified very different fairy people within their Kiwi selves - a far more robust and joyous creature, says Crowder, more in the "naughty pixie" mould.
What: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Where: University of Auckland
When: From Friday to March 13
Pictured: Vanessa Chapple, Ben Crowder and prop. HERALD PICTURE / RUSSELL SMITH
Shakespeare on a shoestring seems to work like a dream
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