[Behind-the-Scenes] Julie Taymor Adapts 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

Julie Taymor's A Midsummer Night's Dream Behind the Scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream on Vimeo.

When award-winning director Julie Taymor takes on a new project, it typically translates to sold-out shows. Now, with just a movie ticket and a few free hours, audiences nationwide can gain access to Taymor's lauded live theater experience through the film adaptation of her 2013 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Today, The Creators Project premieres (above) an exclusive behind-the-scenes short which takes you behind the scrim and through the trapdoors of Taymor's Shakespearian stage.

Taymor shot the multi-camera film during 20 weeks of rave review and packed seats at the Theatre for a New Audience's Polonksy Center in Brooklyn. With Rodrigo Prieto (The Wolf of Wall Street, Babel) acting as director of photography, the play seems made for the silver screen, even without any visual after effects. As a film, it awes with never-before-seen shots of the star-studded cast—getting up close to the trickery and contortions Kathryn Hunter as Puck, highlighting Constance Hoffman's hyperbolized costume designs, and capturing the timeless humor of the bumbling Mechanicals. The illusion of cinema is sealed by Taymor's long-time collaborator and life partner Elliot Goldenthal, who has augmented his original score for the show with added music and sounds.  After attending a screening of the film last week at the Directors' Guild of America theater, we caught up with Taymor to discuss A Midsummer Night's Dream:

The Creators Project: Why do you think that this production lent itself to a film adaptation? 

Julie Taymor: I think the whole concept is cinematic. A lot of my theater work is very cinematic (as with Grounded) and my film work is often highly theatrical (whether you’ve seen Titus, Across The Universe, not Frida so much). I love to crossover in these different mediums. I think what Shakespeare did in his own period is written cinema: He wrote about all of these different locations and these different groups of people. He has written about the fairy world, the supernatural, nature—he gives you a palette from which to draw. Because I used projections on these moving silk—hand-made projections, it’s not naturalism, they are all handmade images of flowers and tree leaves—it really has a very cinematic nature to it with a very theatrical style.

And then, with the talent of the actors that are in it… they are all very physical: from Kathryn (who plays Puck), as you said, to Oberon (David Harewood) and Titania (Tina Benko) and Bottom (Max Casella) and the children and we had a great choreographer, Brian Brooks.

Can you tell me a bit more about the technicalities of the filmmaking itself?

We were on stage with cameras for four days of live shooting from different positions in the audience, but then we were able to literally go on stage with hand-helds and steady cams—while an invited audience was watching us make a movie—and get in the face of the actors and around them which makes it much more immersive than any other theater shots that I’ve ever seen or have ever done myself—and I was the first Live From the Met with The Magic Flute. So I’m aware of how everybody is really excited about this new form, but I think our dream, because of our director of photography, and how we approached it, and how we edited it over 10 weeks and added new score to the film is more immersive and more cinematic than most of live theater. But the production itself [was, too]: it was in a large space, with audience all around, and the kinetic energy itself lends itself to film.

With Rodrigo Prieto, he shot Frida for me, so we go way back. And he’s never shot live theater and we had about four days to prep—literally. We had great cameramen—four cameramen, Rodrigo being one—and we put them into all of these positions around, high, low. During those live productions, the live performances, we really got the best positions in the house. We had three or four hours every day during those performance days, when they would be free in the afternoon, and I could go up to Oberon and say, “you don’t have to project to the back of the house, it’s an inner monologue, make it quiet.” Like, when he says, “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,” we had a steadicam and the steadicam is moving around him without an edit. It’s one take. And those things are very very powerful and you never see them in [National Theatre Live] or West End, they’re not taking the time to shoot like a movie. We took the time during those days. Not a lot, but we were able to edit later so that it has a much more finished movie quality. This is why all the film festivals, starting with Toronto [International Film Festival], invited it all over the world: because it really is a movie. You’re aware that its theater, but it works as a movie.

And yet, the audience at the screening reacted as if it was watching a live show—clapping, laughing, as if we were feeding the actors’ performances.

Yes, it was great. It was like being in a live theater because the actors are still doing it live. You’re watching what was seamless. It moves along and we were able to do that play without stopping.

The one place that the clapping happens on the film is the act break. At the end of that big flower thing, that was the end of Act I. But I didn’t want to [take intermission between] Act I and Act II, I just thought lets just move on. The audience will get it.

What do you think your audience gains with film, and what do you think they lose? 

I don’t think they lose anything, quite honestly. I like it better than the live. Because what I think they gain is the close-up and the reaction shots and the moving camera and the kinetic energy—that they get to be in all the best seats in the house. Out of 85 hours of material, I would say, “well, this moment is best from this camera, from this position.” Or, “this moment is great and we have to be on-stage, we have to be right close-up to the actors. The hammock sequence with Titania and Bottom: No one saw that in the live theater. They saw it as a picture—they heard it, the saw the picture of the two of them, but they couldn’t be at that angle where they could be straight on to Titania and then straight on to Bottom. So I think that the film, for comprehending Shakespeare, is far better. This is my third Shakespeare film, and I know, from Titus and Tempest, that when you go into a close-up and you have the reaction shots of the [other actors] who are listening to the actors who are speaking, you are doubling the comprehension. Because you can see their lips move and their facial expressions and you’re seeing the people listening to that, there is nothing that you miss. You don’t need to understand every single word, you are getting it from all of that nuance.

And then there is Elliot Goldenthal’s score. Another third of music got added to the film after the film was cut [and] he was able to score to the emotions and support the dialogue and the actors’ performances, which, again, adds much more emotional depth. And, we were able to get the colors right [despite the fact that] there are no visual effects. Its all what we shot on stage. But the details are so clear, the costumes, the layers of it, and its just so much fun—like those kids and their pillow fight, being right there in the violence and the bloodiness. Like when you see the Pyramus and Thisbe play, if you were sitting behind the court, you would never have seen their reactions. Now I can show the reactions of the court—and it was very funny when Bottom gets on the ground and is one foot away from the new Duchess, and its as funny as he is. I think that it is a double experience when you’re watching it on film  because you’re getting what the cinema does very well which is the action shots and close-ups and camera movement.

You’ve said that Midsummer is “unfilmable”: what did you mean by that? 

It’s funny, Helen Mirren said this last night—because she was there and she’s been in the play three times, as Titania, Hermia, and Helena—that when you see this put into a realistic, naturalistic setting, it becomes very fake. Isn’t that interesting? It becomes fake. Whereas when you put it into a fake environment, it becomes real. And it becomes real because of the limitations of theater. Like with The Lion King, you know you’re not in the African Savannah but you suspend your disbelief. So when you start having to do the fairy world in movies, you start having to deal with CGI, visual effects, and now, because we are used to that, they have lost their power and their magic. People have become numb to this type of thing and its very difficult. Seeing children, as the fairy, in those moments here, being lifted by actors and having them fly, and you see them being lifted, it is somehow more magical. When Titania just floats down on one simple rope and lands on this silk that was the canopy of sky, instantly the audience knows they are in the heavens, because the canopy of sky floated down with them. I thought that I couldn’t do a movie, a realistic movie of Midsummer —I did the Tempest and I had Ben Whishaw as Ariel—but we did deal with the issue of, “does it look too CGI? Is it real enough? Do you lose the humanity?”

And I think that Helen was right. For me, this works better filming the theatrical version that is so visual—and it wouldn’t be more visual in a movie. You’d be in a forest, a dark forest for a lot of time. Whereas in ours, we have 20 young people, kids with bamboo poles, tormenting our lovers and making these obstacles into a moving magical forest and I think that audiences really appreciated that kind of present magic. Magic that isn’t magical because its hidden but because you understand it and it’s still magical.

And that’s why we’ve been invited to all these film festivals… Because people say, “wow, this is a new form, this is a new kind of hybird,” this isn’t just Live From the Met, Live from NT, this is a real, bonafide new form. If a theater piece really lends itself to cinema, take the time and do it right. It costs more, but it will last longer and it will get out there. Our play had a 20 week run, fully sold out, and it’s 35 people, minus all the understudies you would need if you toured it. And the beauty of this is is now, for a film ticket price, people all over the world, over time will be able to see this production. And that is critical for the life of theater, in particular off-Broadway or noncommercial theater where runs are limited. There aren’t the resources to keep it running even if it is successful.

Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened yesterday in select cinemas. Click here for tickets and more info.

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