''A Children's Midsummer Night's Dream
was made with a cast of 364 children, aged between 8 and 12, from 8 primary schools in Rotherhithe, east London. Shot on a very low budget, the film was made at Sands Films studios, the converted docklands warehouse where Edzard directed Little Dorrit. This was the tenth collaboration between Goodwin and Edzard, who is known for her meticulous filmmaking, often based on Victorian English sources. Their other productions include Stories from a Flying Trunk'' (1979),
The Nightingale (1981),
Biddy (1983),
Little Dorrit (1987),
The Fool (1990),
As You Like It (1991),
Amahl and the Night Visitors (1996),
The IMAX Nutcracker (1997) and
The Good Soldier Schwejk (2018). Many of the children who formed the cast, all non-professional actors, came from the North Peckham estate where 10-year old Damilola Taylor was fatally stabbed during production, just a stone's throw from Sands studios. This event drew the world's attention to some of the estates of Southwark, their abandonment and lack of government funding and resources, and associated crime levels. However, Sands' film project, which “acquainted a multiracial group of inner-city schoolchildren with Shakespeare” was turned down by the Arts Council for lottery funding, despite the council's stated aims to “support and encourage cultural diversity and social inclusiveness”. This led to the stalling of the film during post-production. According to Stockman, the Arts Council's decision was made on political, rather than artistic, terms and was affected by the political nature of the film – for example the decision by director Edzard not to recruit the children through an acting agency. Edzard and production co-ordinator Annabel Hands said they preferred to use untrained children with “no preconceptions”. The cast of children learnt new skills and improved their self-esteem, and “not one child dropped out during the six-month shoot.” Edzard explained that these were children who had “potential and curiosity” but “were not being offered anything” and were hence “cut off from reality”. When Stockman began working with Edzard in the late 1970s, she already had the idea for the film. Loving the play, but realising that its childish or ridiculous situations presented difficulties for adult actors, Edzard decided that the only way to make the film work would be to use actors who would not bring cultural baggage inherited from drama school or familiarity with Shakespeare. Hence the decision to use children, who would read the text without adding their own, sometimes misjudged, experience. Filming took around six months during the school year. The studio was only allowed to take the children out for a few hours a day - collecting them in a minibus after lunch and returning them home individually. The classes were often overcrowded so the schools were pleased that some children were taken out of the classroom as it made it more manageable for them. The children were not only performers but were involved in the whole project of making a film - doing clapperboards, preparing the costumes, the sets, the forest, cutting leaves in workshops. ==Themes and interpretations==