A flying fairy with a magical flower, a talking mule and people falling in love everywhere for no obvious reason.
It's all part of a day's work for about 100 primary students who have been rehearsing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which will be staged at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui next month.
The boys and girls, whose mother tongue is Cantonese, will perform an adaptation of the famous play in English. They will also show off the dancing and singing skills they learned over the summer, with the help of Shakespeare4All (S4A) - a registered charity.
The organisation is dedicated to promoting English fluency through Shakespeare's plays. It runs drama classes for schools and introduces children to literature at an early age. It was established two years ago and A Midsummer Night's Dream is its second production, after last year's Macbeth.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy featuring kings and queens, fairies, a forest, and a magic flower, which makes people fall in love with the first person they see. The production asks key questions: What is real and what is false? And, what is true love?
According to the children, aged between nine and 12, performing the centuries-old play is a riot.
'I like [Shakespeare's] stories simply because they are so much fun,' said Sarah Cheung, who will play Lysander.
