"Nothing by Shakespeare before A Midsummer Night’s Dream is its equal and in some respects nothing by him afterwards surpasses it. It is his first undoubted masterpiece, with-out flaws, and one of his dozen or so plays of overwhelming originality and power."
— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
On any given night, audiences somewhere in the world are soaking up the supernatural delights of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is Shakespeare’s most beloved and produced work. And why not? It has everything; comedy, drama, magic, passion, fairies, lovers, clowns, and some of the most gorgeous language ever set to paper.
But, familiarity has, perhaps, inured us to what a radical and experimental play this actually is. In writing it, Shakespeare took theatrical traditions established by the Greeks and put them through a blender. He interwove a dizzying array of plotlines, pointed up the absurd foibles of romantic passion and, through the play’s meta theatricality (paving the way for later meta-theatrical playwrights such as Brecht and Pirandello), posed essential questions about the relationships between life and art, appearance and illusion, dreams, and reality. With Midsummer, Shakespeare transformed the theatre forever.
And with this play he transformed my life as it was this play that made me fall in love truly and deeply with Shakespeare's words. Despite the fact that I was attending the National Shakespeare Conservatory at the time (so you would think I had some knowledge of his plays), it wasn't until I had the opportunity to play Puck in my first few months there that I really felt his words touch my soul. So much so that, much to some of my student's chagrin, I can still perform his "My mistress with a monster is in love" narration to Oberon from memory. Something in the playfulness of that characters spirit grafted with that of a young boy from Texas and it has not left me since. It transformed me from a boy who merely acted and started me on the path of wanting to become a performer willing to take on any role as long as I could be on stage.
And to some extent, I think you'll find that many of the young people on this stage and behind the scenes have themselves been transformed by their own experience with this play.
It’s fitting then, that of the play’s many themes (love, betrayal, jealousy, gender, magic, illusion, nature, and patriarchal structure, to name a few), transformation is the one that resonates most clearly. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, artistically, everyone and everything in this play changes. Some for better, some for worse, some literally, others figuratively, but no one ends the play as they began it.
And who among us couldn’t use a little transformation right now? The last few years have been, well, pretty dark. We’ve struggled with division, climate change, natural disasters, and a seemingly endless global pandemic. We’ve lost loved ones, community, familiar routine, safety, civility and, for a time, the ability to enjoy live performance. With stunning prescience, Titania’s speech in Act 2, scene 1, foretells our current state of existence:
"The human mortals want their winter cheer;
No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.
Therefore, the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter…”
But! But! But! Hope is on the horizon! Live theatre is back! So, for “this long age of three hours / Between our after-supper and bed-time” I hope this play can give us all a bit of magic, a means of transformation, and a way of turning, even for a while, some darkness into light.
And now, as an older (and hopefully wiser?) theatre practicioner, this is my fifth experience with this play. The members of the company and I thank you for joining us, regardless of whether this is your own first Dream, your fifteenth, or your fiftieth. We hope you will find—as I have—that if you are open, it will continue to offer you great gifts of love, laughter, insight, and inspiration each and every time.
