What Fools These Mortals Be is an inventive retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream improvised and co-created as a series of tableau vivants (living pictures) by a dynamic group of women with lived experience.
The project is a collaboration between The Circle Project, Vancouver artist Adad Hannah and fourteen women bringing their gifts of imagination, resilience and boundless creativity.
Upcoming Shows
April 20 -September 9, 2024
Audain Art Museum, “Otherwise Disregarded”, Whistler, B.C.
July 6 – September 2, 2023
Pumphouse Museum, “The Art of Survival/A Prison for Women Memorial Collective Exhibition”, Kingston, Ontario
May – September 2023
Canadian Embassy, Tokyo, Japan
January 25 – February 25, 2023
Artspace Gallery, 378 Aylmer St. Peterborough, Ontario K9H 3V8.
Curated by Amy Siegal for the Reframe Film Festival.
October 20 – 23, 2022
Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, Queen’s University
September 15 – 20, 2022
Simon Fraser University Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Feil and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, 149 West Hastings, Vancouver.
To book the show please contact:
Participants met weekly, sharing stories in Talking Circles and sparking imaginations through studio workshops.
The Circle Project brings together women from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, united by a commitment to reimagine story, creativity, and self-determination.
The group took part in a series of studio workshops exploring what form the project could take.
In one of the brainstorming sessions, Jess, one of the participants suggested we do Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Working with a professional crew, participants spent three weeks constructing sets, props, and costumes to be used in the production.
We could all instantly see the potential of the idea and the group quickly came together around designing and planning its development.
“I feel like we are living things that we would have done in high school, kind of going back in time. It definitely shows the sisterhood of all women women here.” -Meena.
“The drawing and the charcoal and the painting and the organizing and everything brought back a lot of old positive thinking.” -Jessy
The resulting silent tableaux vivants were shot on the final weekend of the month.
They then moved in front of the camera, embodying all the characters in Shakespeare’s play.
“It’s way more than my imagination thought.Its really awesome to see how it is all coming together and coming in every week and seeing the changes and seeing how hard everybody has worked. And the ideas that everybody has had, just come together.” -Emily.
“I love the ladies we work with. I love everybody here. Absolutely amazing, I’m glad to be a part of it.” -Becky.
What Fools These Mortals Be (The Making Of)