Forge Production House Summer Tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Tour

Tour was manic, stressful, exhausting but enormous fun. It was a new experience for almost everyone.

We started at Ludlow Brewery which was great. It was smallest of the venues but it was packed out with a great atmosphere. The actors had to change outside and avoid falling off the tiny stage. For me it was brilliant. I got to get pretty unique photos of the actors dressed up in their finery at a Brewery surrounded by a farm and an Aldi! Inside it was tough the light was dreadful but the brewery day was much more about the bits outside of the actual performance, the prep and entering and exiting the brewery, the show photos could wait for the theatres.

The next venue was The Borough Theatre in Abergavenny. I love shooting the actors doing their make up in the dressing rooms and so I did a lot of this at the Borough. I shot the show from an elevated position in the audience. I normally dislike this position because I like to be on ground level in the wings but it worked well. The lighting suited where I was and I got some good shots.

Birmingham Crescent Theatre was my last venue on the tour. They carried onto Bristol and finally Hereford but I had to go back to work, press work that is.

I had got a great spread of what you could call documentary images. The brewery stuff and the pre show shots in Abergavenny. I liked the show shots from the Borough but I was anxious because I hadn’t got the killer show shot – remember I had been working on this show for 6 months. I could not finish without the killer show shot.

I shot the first half of the show from about the third row. It worked ok but I decided to shoot the second half from my favourite position in the wings. Thank goodness I did because it made such a difference. I love the energy being down there and being so close. Of course a good relationship with the cast is key when your so close when they are coming off stage right by you. I get on with them great so it was no problem. I got the photos I wanted.

Photo below was shot in the first half so it was a decent angle. I like it, it conveys the two characters well.

Then as you can see I moved into the wings.

And there’s that shot I wanted!