Write your analysis of what was particularly effective and/or ineffective about the performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays.
Recently, I had the opportunity to witness the portrayal of one of Shakespeare’s most popular stage works, the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) in Staunton, VA. The director was Mr. Ralph Cohen that led a cast of twelve actors. Mr. Cohen’s production did an excellent job at entertaining the spectators and allowing them to exercise the joy of imagination. The play continually engages the audience to effortlessly imagine. It lasted exactly two hours and thirty minutes.
The playhouse was mainly constructed with wood and indoor. The stage was simple, without any elaborate sets or objects to represent the location or environment of the ongoing act. The minimal staging helped speed transitions between scenes, kept the story moving and further facilitated the process of imagination of the crowd. Someone would need to imagine a large dense forest or Theseus’ castle as the act progressed. Drapery in the background was present for the actors to enter and exit the scene, with two additional doors on each side. The actors and the audience also shared the same light. Music and sounds, if not played on stage, were played behind the curtains, not visible to the audience. The spectator body was mainly composed preponderantly of young students and parents with their respective children.
At the very start, the announcer spoke a mixture of Early Modern and Modern English to arouse amusement within the crowd. He exhorted everyone to turn off cellphones, something that never happened in Shakespeare’s time. He also used words such as “Hashtag” (#), which is a label used in social networks, to indicate respect and appropriate silence among the viewers present. Some of the students were sitting on stools on the sides of the stage, and often interacted with the actor.
As soon as the play commenced, the first noticeable difference, between the original Shakespearean version and ASC’s physical representation, was the modern fashion clothing. The modern garments allowed better comprehending about each individual’s personality and role. Also, the young audience could relate more easily to each performer and identify the actors with someone they would already know, using imagination.
Theseus walks on the stage wearing a red coat, very similar to the 2011 royal wedding dress of the current Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, future heir to the throne of England. He appears to be truly majestic and the atmosphere of the stage can be easily associated with the true royal wedding that happened a few years ago in England. Hippolyta, his soon to be wife, wears a green simple dress to show that she is still an exotic Amazon fighter. The lovers, instead, all wore something similar. The males had a suit and tie and the females wore dresses. They could easily be associated with any adults in their late 20s wanting to find and keep a relationship. However, these correlations are different for each spectator, as each person has a different imagination.
Another character that is worth mentioning is Nick Bottom. He only wore a partial donkey mask at the ASC play. The donkey head only had the two ears, without the nose, showing the full actor’s face. But Puck’s magic and Titiana’s comments on his long nose rendered thoroughly the idea that his face was indeed like a donkey’s.
Furthermore, the play within the play near the end of the wedding was a great representation of the good entertainment that this play portrayed and the need of imagination to make it great. The actors managed to arouse much laughter among the spectators with Bottom’s prolonged and funny suicide as Pyramus. The craftsmen’s play within the play, in Act V, is there to represent the story of the lovers in the previous four acts. But the craftsmen, not the authors, did such a poor job at acting, that it required imagination from the audience to distinguish reality and fiction of the play. The craftsmen’s play was as good as anybody imagined it.
With imagination, anything is as good as one makes it. Even with the terrible acting in the play within the play, they were moving the play because of imagination. The audience imagined that the actors were a real wall, a real lion and a true suicide that actually happened. Bottom and the other actors were able to inspire love and sympathy.
I highly encourage you all to attend this representation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the American Shakespeare Center. It has been a wonderful first time experience.
Help Received:
Used some ideas that I have wrote in my Short Paper of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, earlier during the semester. I used my Short Paper analysis to proper compare the play that I have seen at the ASC and the play that I have read.