released August 31, 2020

The Duke of Athens and the Amazon Queen are getting married in the morning. It’s going to be a big one, and everyone’s invited. The King and Queen of the Fairies arrive into ancient Athens, ready to be guests of honour at the party of the age.

There's a gifted new Changeling in town -- a uniquely talented human who’s attracting some attention. Titania has plans, Oberon’s wound up about it, there’s a long night ahead and naturally it all comes down to who does what. The planets have their own ideas, and elsewhere, deep within the forest, we see a leatherworker and part-time male stripper rehearsing a play that’s ahead of its time…

This is A Midsummer Night's Dream as you've never known it before. A punk revision of Shakespeare's narratives of pleasure and power, WILD TIME is a new world composed of erotic and theatrical acrobatics, taking liberties with Greek gods and literary idols like nothing is sacred. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and you’ve got a front row seat.


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Featured in the Guardian’s ‘Hottest front-room seats’
and Lyn Gardner’s Pick of the Week.

HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING...
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“Huge fun!…an exuberant puck-fest that knows its arse from its bottom”
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Alan Moore
(Jerusalem, Illuminations)


“Funny and mischievous, WILD TIME is a delightful reinvention…
a treat for lovers of theatre and the fantastical”
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EJ Swift


“WILD TIME is a genuinely intoxicating night in the woods. Generous and witty, sexy and extremely smart, it torments Shakespeare with such lascivious glee and trips nimbly through the theatrical canon, leaving stardust & honeydew in its wake. To see the universe expanded out in prose, but also subverted and punked and stripped down and re-focussed, is a constant joy. I've never read anything like it.”
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Stewart Pringle, Dramaturg
National Theatre


Wild Time is a queer and joyous ride - a hymn to theatre,
sex and intertextuality.
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Emma Jude Harris
Director/Dramaturg & Researcher


“Boldly experimental and daring, not to mention fabulously entertaining… One of the most remarkable aspects of this book is the way it honours its source material: the bawdiness, the humour, the word play, the theatrical chaos – they’re all here, all mined knowingly and inventively and to delightful effect. The authors’ willingness to be bold and innovative in terms of language and form adds extra verve, and their understanding of and appreciation for *theatre* in every sense of the word results in a work that almost demands to be adapted for the stage. The poetry, humour and sheer joy with which the erotic elements are handled is refreshing and beautiful (and may indeed leave some readers opting for an early night :-)) Wild Time is a book that will raise a sorely needed smile as these dark days encroach.”
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Nina Allan


“I loved this book so much. Wow. A world of consensual desire, intergalactic tactility, theatre ancient and contemporary: the most glorious rethinking of Shakespeare's Dream.”
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Andy Kesson
Reader in Renaissance Literature, Roehampton


“A lusty reimagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream, WILD TIME spins you at arm's length in the middle of its heated embrace. Transgression is at its heart: this new version does its best to rip off the shackles of its originator, but pays homage to it too by breaking as many rules as it can - just as Puck and his cohorts are wont to do. It’s like being in a really fun, messy party where I want to be friends - and maybe more - with them all… erotic and direct, joyful and funny, WILD TIME entices as much as it shocks. There are dangerous pleasures to be had here… if you’re bold enough.”
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Honour Bayes
Writer & Critic


"a witty homage to Shakespeare's Dream... raunchy, irreverent, transformative"
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Carol Rutter, Professor of Shakespeare
& Performance Studies, University of Warwick


"This book promised an alternative A Midsummer Night’s Dream 'as never seen before', and it definitely delivered. If you are looking for an experimental text that packs a lot of punches, this may be just what you need."
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British Fantasy Society


"Separately and together, Rose Biggin and Keir Cooper have transformed pole-dancing, Don Quixote and the short-lived Second Spanish Republic into scintillating punk theatre. With WILD TIME they move in the opposite direction, weaving a lusty, rumbustious novel from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You might think this play had undergone all possible mutations in the past century, but no: Biggin and Cooper breathe new magic into Shakespeare’s supposedly “universal” story by expanding it across the universe, turning one set of lovers into spiralling, pulsating star-matter, and giving the fairy powers of Oberon and Titania a luscious enhancement. Out goes Shakespeare’s misogynist revenge-porn and in come polyamorous revels, a throng of wanton Amazons, and a queen of the forest bower whose erotic encounters spread joy across the firmament... and pleasure across the page."
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Maddy Costa
Writer & Critic


"Rose Biggin & Keir Cooper present a wonderful mix of the modern, the magical and the sensual. The use of language here is exquisite…smart yet funny; absurd and powerfully intoxicating. The key focus is on Titania and Oberon’s dealing, and this time less of the feuding courts and cruel lessons but more of partners learning to better communicate. This version of the story focuses on the relationships these fae inhabit and also their ability to throw away inhibitions. They are free spirited, not viewing one as subservient to the other. The theme here is learning to understand your partners - be you fae, Athenian royalty or, in one brilliant idea, the heavenly bodies. As the dark nights draw in, this is a perfect evening read to take you away from it all; raise your passions, make you laugh and remember that life needs some magic to make it interesting. One of my reading highlights of 2020. You NEED this one!"
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Runalong The Shelves


“I was laughing literally out loud. The pages that authors Biggin and Cooper offer up are quite - astounding. I still can’t get it out of my mind.”
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Robert Raymond


“This is a novel deeply literate in the theories and critical readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and constructs a layered world that delights in crossing boundaries - the temporal blurring is just one facet of the book's outward explosion of the worlds of Dream. In the cosmos, several different clusters of astronomical phenomena come together - it's the most ambitious in its writing and offers a profundity to the more comic action in the main plot. Wild Time is also a love letter to theatre, and a welcome one in a time when these spaces are shut down. The semi-satirical, semi-affectionate sketching of actors and their audience make one want to see the whole play-within-a-novel. It's a queer reclamation of a play whose heteronormative constraints and structures make it such a problem; a reimagining of what form a truly joyful and consensual dream/Dream might take.”
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Come to the Pedlar


“Funny, entertaining and ambitious, a feminist and sex-positive critique that playfully engages with the ideas and methods of theatre in inventive and unexpected ways. Witty, fast paced and memorable. Bristling with new ideas and an anarchic style that is very much its own, it’s easy to imagine the Bard himself enjoying this take on his work very much.”
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Fantasy Hive




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Theatre Events beginning with L:

LIVERPOOL
Wild Time a theatrical novel
feat. Garnett 'Ratte' Frost
(June 2023: Shakespeare North)

LONDON
Wild Time at Birkbeck Arts Week
feat Prof Sue Wiseman
(April 2023: Birkbeck)

LANCASTER
Wild Time at The Dukes
feat. Christine Mackie
(May 2022: Dukes Lancaster)

LEEDS
Wild Time: a theatrical novel
feat. Dr Kara McKechnie
(Oct 2021: Slung Low)

LONDON
Wild Time: a theatrical novel at CPT
feat. Emma Jude Harris
(Feb 2021: Camden People's Theatre)