A Midsummer Night's Dream: Production Design - Set and Costume

A scenographic commission for a collaboratively devised production of Shakespeare’s play, this research project addresses how visual androgyny is achieved through costume and make-up in performance and how recognisable gender differentials are created using economical means given a masculine-created androgynous starting point and how these emblems interface with the characters in the narrative.

Produced initially at West Berkshire Playhouse, the event was toured by the Arts Council England to UK venues including the Comedy Theatre in London’s West End, Europe (Ireland, Germany, Italy) and the USA (BAM, New York).

Produced by ‘Propeller’, the company Pavelka co-founded with Edward Hall (1997), which aims to mix a rigorous approach to the text with energy and speed. The design Pavelka created in his role as production designer (set and costume) supports and provides integrated frameworks for the physical performances characteristic of ‘Propeller’: such as the scenic exposition of the company at all times, declaring the actors as a versatile chorus that are seen to contribute to the aural and spatial landscape.

Scenographic research referenced the world of the Victorian nursery and its implied suspension of emergent sexuality. Using the reductive and uniform properties of the naked doll as a starting point, the design of the project developed over an extensive rehearsal period incorporating make-up tests and costume workshops. Propeller’s all male ensemble explored the play’s narrative from the perspective of a poetic and spiritual reference point rather than the earth-bound; referencing the narrative drive of Benjamin Britten’s opera. The work established a regular residency at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.

This project was Winner Best Touring Production, 2003 at the Theatre Management Association Theatre Awards and was nominated for Best Visiting Production, 2003 at the Manchester Evening News Awards.

Biography
Michael Pavelka is an award-winning international scenographer who has designed over 130 productions world-wide, many of which have been new plays or new musicals. His 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'Galileo' both won Manchester Evening Standard Awards (for Best Production and Best Design respectively). 'Rose Rage' (a two-part adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy) won the 2002 Barclay's Theatre Award for Best Touring Production and (in a later production at the Chicago Shakespeare Company) the Chicago Jeff Awards nominated him for Best Costume Design. His designs for the Royal Shakespeare Company include 'The Odyssey', 'Two Gentlemen of Verona', 'Henry V' and 'Julius Caesar'. While on the Designer's Committee of Equity, he played a role in formulating prototype professional contracts for theatre designers. He is Course Leader of the Design for Performance course at Wimbledon College of Art.

Pavelka's early theatre work included designs for two productions by Lindsay Anderson including 'Holiday' at the Old Vic and for numerous other West End plays and musicals. He has exhibited at the 'Time and Space' and '2D>3D' expositions of stage design. From the mid to late 1990s Pavelka worked in Uganda with leading African writer-performers on the first African language production (in Lugandan) of Bertold Brecht's 'Mother Courage And Her Children', which toured the Grahamstown Festival in South Africa, and the African Odyssey season at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC.