Shakespeare’s Mini Midsummer Night’s Dream
Wildflowers, Wings, and the Flower Fairies:
a whimsical voice work for the Summer Solstice
WATCH:
The Flower Fairy’s entrance on the petal-strewn path—bounding across the elements and singing of cowslips, dew drops, and The Fairy Queen.
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood,
thorough fire
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon’s sphere…
At sunset, beneath towering sunflowers and wild blooming brush, I filmed a Midsummer spell: the Flower Fairy’s monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
It’s a little high-fae couture meets avant-operatic mischief: vocal fireworks and glitter-fueled comedic whimsy—old magic and new sound.
Costume? Naturally. Hand-made horns from an Etsy magician? Yes! Wings procured from the most ridiculous corner of the internet (thanks, Bezos!) + copious sparkles.
💫 Tech Magic
I layered the live footage with an animated version of myself created using Kaiber AI’s dreamy visuals. I flicker between worlds: embodied and digitally enchanted: the Me who is Not Me, and yet is Very Me.
It’s strange, delightful, a little uncanny—and I love it: never underestimate the power of rendering oneself a fairy and the joy in the magical tech we have now to do it.
🌀 Flashback: Midsummer, 1595
The original A Midsummer Night’s Dream is believed to have premiered around 1595 or 1596, England was rocking between a glittering Renaissance and empirical strife, plague memories, and an anxious undercurrent of succession fears, economic shifts, and religious policing.
Sound familiar?
The work shows us a beautiful and unstable landscape of linguistic play, mischief, and dream logic. There is revelry, reflection, love, and illusion, reminding us that nothing in the human world (or fairy) stays fixed for long.
Please accept a little Midsummer enchantment—because sometimes the only way through is with wings, whimsy, and wildflowers…
🌀
The Flower Fairy
Misha Penton: voice, performance, editing, production
D. Nickerson: camera
Horns by Idolatrē
🎭🧚♀️🌼
Misha Penton, The Flower Fairy