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Tina Hofman as Lady Macbeth. Credit: Roman de Fruscan
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MEDIA PRESS RELEASE
Dreamscape Odyssey: Quest for Home
What do you get when you cross an Anglicised Croatian, a half Sri-Lankan Englishman, add a hint of Scottish, some
Canadian roots and an upbringing in the Channel Islands? Well, you get the cast of Dreamscape’s latest production: “Full
of Sound and Fury”, by acclaimed British writer Roman de Fruscan.
Fortunately, with this sort of cosmopolitan background Dreamscape, though currently based in Britain, have set
themselves up as an international touring company. Well…it’s the only way they get to visit family and friends! As well
as performing regularly in Canada in Britain, they have also been invited to Croatia, Brazil and Germany, as well as
America. One day, they might even get around to following up these offers, but for the moment they have set their sights
on New Zealand.
Marcus Fernando and Tina Hofman, the core members of Dreamscape, have long been hoping to visit New Zealand, and this is
their first opportunity to do so. Hopefully, it will not be the last. It’s all part of their master plan to find a nice
place to live: somewhere where people still stop to say “hello” to each other, and not every piece of green land is
treated as a potential building site. Already, they have been quite struck by their travels to small communities in the
Rocky Mountains, and there are parts of Europe which still haven’t been completely sold out to the developers….yet!
But…the search goes on. Marcus and Tina love nature…and New Zealand has always come across as a beautiful country. Given
the option, they’ll abandon the car and walk…or cycle, and their ultimate dream is to one day build an eco-home powered
entirely by renewable energy resources.
...but just for the moment all that is in the future. For the moment, we shall continue our theatrical odyssey. We don’t
know where we’re heading, but we’re sure we’ll know when we get there! Of course, if anyone out there has any
suggestions, we’d be more than happy to hear from you!
DREAMSCAPE UK: PRESS RELEASE!
THE THEATRE OF WAR
For the two performers of Dreamscape’s “Sound and Fury”, life could not have been more different.
Coincidentally, they were born on the same date in May, though some years apart. Marcus Fernando appeared first, in the
sleepy town on Dorchester in Dorset, famous as Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge, while Tina Hofman was born in the bustling
Yugoslavian city of Zagreb.
At first, nothing seemed unusual; both were given good educations and achieved good results. Both took some time
deciding what to do as a career: Marcus trained in Archaeology, Tina was tempted by Law…what could be more normal?
But in the 1990’s all this was to change. For Marcus, life went on as planned: University training, followed by his
first acting job (playing Gollom in a stage production of “The Hobbit”), but for Tina the world was rapidly becoming one
of uncertainty.
The former Yugoslavia split spectacularly apart, and Tina found herself in a war zone. It is hard to conceive how a
modern, 20th century society can change so rapidly, but in 1994, while Marcus was playing Don Pedro in an open air tour
of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing”, Tina was spending nights in air raid shelters as Slobodan Milosevic’s jets
flew overhead. Bombs falling, grenades exploding, snipers on rooftops, all became part of Tina’s world. True, Zagreb
escaped comparatively lightly compared with other areas in the Balkans, but nevertheless the danger was still present.
Her father was blown off his feet by a cluster bomb, but miraculously survived unscathed, and to this day there is a
bullet still embedded in the window frame of the flat where she lived with her mother.
Fortunately for all, peace eventually returned to the region and Tina was able to return to a normal life. She left her
native Croatia to go to London to train at the prestigious Desmond Jones School of Mime and Physical Theatre, and it was
there that she met Marcus. The rest, as they say, in Dreamscape terms, is history.
But nothing lasts forever. Marcus, who is half Sri-Lankan, has watched that island being devastated first by civil war,
then by the Tsunami. Now, it looks as if the conflict is starting all over again. It would seem that in the world of
today, the Theatre of War is one which is set to run and run.
ENDS