Bottom: what it’s like playing Shakespeare’s most famous ass

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Subtitled “a play for the nation”, this Dream is an ambitious but egalitarian project, an inclusive way to celebrate 400 years since Shakespeare’s death. “There have been raunchier versions, but there might have been an embarrassment factor to it too, so they’ve made the right choice,” says John Chapman, a Bottom for the Barbican in London; at 62, he’s a member of the Tower Theatre Company, an amateur group dating back to 1932, as well as working as an education consultant. That said, he reports that Dharker is very responsive to whatever the Bottoms throw at her – once, when lounging in her fairy bower, “I suddenly saw her toes, and I thought ‘ooh, I could do this little piggy went to market’… and Ayesha just goes with it.” For Dharker, this unusual way of working is proving exhilarating. We’ve had a couple of very quivery Bottoms!” ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is on tour until 4 June, and at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from 15 June to 16 July