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Eight actors are deep into rehearsal in a studio in Portsmouth, England, a little more than a week before the first public performance of “Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company’s online work inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” As the actors work, director Robin McNicholas rattles off some of the cultural touchstones that inspired the production. Among them: popular video game “Fortnite” and “Bandersnatch,”the choice-driven episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror.”
“The games industry releases a work and iterates,” says McNicholas. “As users interact, living story worlds evolve. We see that in mass-audience examples such as ‘Fortnite.’ The dynamic that causes that is somehow so much more compelling than, say, a traditional model of beginning, middle and end. In this show, we’ve made sure each production is going to be very different.”