Film and theater director Julie Taymor has just wrapped up shooting on her fifth film: a big-screen version of her visually lavish reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The stage presentation ran earlier this year at Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Despite rave reviews, Taymor knew the production couldn’t travel. “Many people wanted to tour, but it’s completely impractical,” she said. “There were 17 children and 15 principals. It will probably never see the light of day again as a live production, so I feel very good about the film.”
Taymor was quick to differentiate her project from other recent stage-to-screen productions. “It’s not like Live From the Met,” she commented. “This is even more thorough. We shot all performances straight through, putting cameras in different positions at each show, and then in the daytime we went onstage with handheld cameras. I think it’s fairly unusual, because it is a real hybrid of live theater and film. It’s very cinematic. There are no visual effects — they’re all live.”
Taymor’s last film was another Shakespeare project, 2010’s The Tempest, in which the male character of Prospero was played by Helen Mirren to shift the play’s dynamics into that of a mother-daughter relationship.
Taymor says we can look for the film at this year’s Toronto Film Festival in September.
[via Vulture]
