Friday, September 11, 2009

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Join us October 3rd for Shakespeare Allowed!'s 1st birthday.

4 comments:

Denice said...

Greetings, Fellow Journeyers! Due to the wonderful attendance growth for Shakespeare Allowed!, our gracious hosts at the downtown library are moving us on up--to the 3rd floor!
Follow the signs on Saturday and come see the room that the library is designating "the Shakespeare Allowed! Room."
It's turned a bit chilly, but reading Midsummer together will recreate the warmth and magic of a night filled with mystical adventures in the forest!
(I know that's totally corny, but Shakespeare brings out the child in me!)
Come read and laugh with us on Saturday--and afterward we can use this space to talk about whether or not Shakespeare wrote Pyrramus and Thisby based on his own sense of humor about Romeo and Juliet, or based on his actor's goofing off while rehearsing it.

Smith said...

Thanks everyone for a great reading today. Midsummer is my favorite of the comedies. Bottom cracks me up every time.

My suggestion for how to present the fairies was steampunk. I was explaining steampunk to Hailey, and she suggested goth steampunk. Then we found this dude:

http://rantchick.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/steampunk21.jpg

And there you go. Goth steampunk fairy. Steampuck!

Anyway, I figure the fairies need to be distinctively other. Marginalized or liminal. So maybe instead of magic they have steampunk retro-futurist technology. Or maybe they're circus folks or nerds or space aliens or college republicans.

David Teems said...

I think Matt's [smith] idea is worth pursuing. Much better than my Nazi prison guard theme [Titania is rather butch, cropped hair, a woman of heft, lots of gravel and severity in her voice, no humor at all.]. Ouch.

That aside (thank God) Saturday's read was my favorite too, I think. One of my favorite Shakespeare speeches is Titania's forgeries of jealousy speech. That, and Oberon's I know a bank where the wild thyme blows. These ecstasies never age, nor do they ever fail to enchant. They are, truly, as plucked out of a dream.

And then there is Bottom of course, who, like Falstaff and Mercutio (his aliases) demand more of the reader/actor than others. These guys are almost larger than the plays they traffic. Bottom literally steps out of the ether to bring out the belly laugh in each of us. [Therefore, Bottom's dream has no bottom. He is too palpable, too outrageously present, too immediate for a mere dream to contain him.]

Would love to see more traffic on this blog. I get tired of my own rant sometimes.

Denice said...

That steam puck is gorgeous! I love the notion that just because the fairy world controls the natural one, that they don't necessarily have to be made of flowers and things. According to the fairy's speeches, they are tiny creatures--creeping into acorn cups and things--but they really could LOOK anyway we wanted them to. I agree with Matt, they definitely need to be "other." The last time I directed this show we played with fractal images--it was quite an education for me. This next time around, I'm excited about opening the doors of creativity even wider and finding the true essence of that fairy world! Anybody else have any specific images?