Midsummer (JMK Runner Up 2023)

Midsummer

Runner Up Prize, JMK Award with The Orange Tree Theatre, 2023

A speculative design & concept for Midsummer by David Greig, working with designer Anna Orton

Lighting Design - Jo Palmer
Music arrangement & sound design - Simon Liddell

This is a space of energy and optimism in our production, set in ironic contrast to the realities of living through austerity in 2008, or a housing crisis in 2023. We will create a DIY, indie-rock punk gig space - referencing and celebrating subcultures that have defied the mainstream and left their mark. We'll be able to transform and elevate -embracing the fantastical in the play, whilst evoking the grime and the grit of the characters’ realities.

We’ve been exploring the surreal and the punk and the grime through how we shape our space materially - pink fluff and dance floor, rain becomes glitter, tartan on the walls or on a guitar case - bringing Edinburgh to the space in an cheeky, punk way. We’ve got metallic gold fringed podiums - It’s a bit kitsch, DIY. It’s self-aware that it’s theatre and storytelling and gigging.

MIDSUMMER speaks to me as someone in my thirties - considering parenthood, and thinking about personal legacy - navigating my choices, often at odds with the conventional…

The play came out in 2008, in the wake of the financial crash -

It is for those of that generation processing the impact of the crash - and for our generation - now in our 30s - our entire adult lives have been defined by the resulting instability: austerity, a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis...

It’s for the generation after us too - wondering how the hell it’s going to get any better from here.

It’s the realisation of their mortality and the drive to do something meaningful that binds but also drives Helena and Bob. And underneath this desperation, the story offers its audience a message of hope:

Hope - that through unlikely encounters with complete strangers, we can restore our faith in ourselves, and the worldcan feel more possible.

I want to position this play in a space that allows the audience to feel the uncertainty and pressure that thecharacters feel, and at the same time, to realise their adaptiveness and resourcefulness.

Ultimately I want them to leave with an empowering message of agency.