Midsummer: Now it can be told...
/This weekend was performance weekend for Southern Arc Dance Company’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I have a summary for you.
We started back in January with a series of “interest” workshops, which turned into “how to do Shakespeare” workshops, which then just kept going as rehearsals. We accreted cast members as we went, not because they auditioned but because they were recruited.
Few of the cast had ever been in a play; only one had done Shakespeare before (Mike S., who played the Old Duke in As You Like It back in 2020). We rehearsed only twice a week (Thu night/Sat morning) because the dancers were already over-committed with their regular lessons.
So you might be astonished that what audiences saw Saturday night and Sunday afternoon was a lovely, charming, and generally well-acted bit of Shakespearean whimsy.
My staging was to be environmental/site-specific. For our performance at the McRitchie-Hollis House Museum, we would start out on the front lawn with a cocktail party for Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. The Rude Mechanicals would be hired as waitstaff to serve drinks. Audience members would mingle with the young lovers and the court, chatting and learning all the gossip about who loves whom. Peter Quince would show his new script (Pyramus & Thisbe) to anyone who would listen.
We’d start with Theseus telling his party planner Philostrate to go find entertainment for the wedding night — which Bottom realizes is their big break, so he shoves his tray into the hands of the nearest audience member and rounds up all the Mechanicals.
The lovers finish their bit, and the Mechanicals gather to cast their play. As they finish, from behind the museum comes a flock of small fairies bearing glowing orbs — they entice the audience to follow them around the museum to the garden in the back, where we perform the rest of the play, finally sitting for Act V and the performance of Pyramus & Thisbe.
Fun, right?
Our first runthrough at the museum was Tuesday night, and it was immediately clear that the traffic noise from the two major streets was too much. (Thank you, big-ass pickup trucks and motorcycles.) So we ditched the front yard/fairy parade.
Next to go was the audience roaming free and following the action: the garden space was too small (which I should have calculated). And as that runthrough went on, I reblocked and revamped and re-everythinged until the entire show had an entirely new flow.
And by the time we had an audience on Saturday night, it was wonderful. (Then on Sunday, we were in a park in Hogansville, GA, and it reflowed all over again.)
Was it exhausting? You bet. I’m too old to be bus-and-trucking a show here and yon. Was it challenging? You try training a nearly completely inexperienced cast to do Shakespeare. Was it nerve-wracking? Ever had team members just plopped onto the team willy-nilly?
Was it worth it? Absolutely. I started directing in Newnan 48 years ago, and the first Shakespeare Newnan saw was Midsummer, 45 years ago, and it was with the teenagers who had no other theatre program in their life. We called it the Newnan Associated Summer Theatre Youth, or N.A.S.T.Y. for short.
This Midsummer was like that one: working with young people who were talented but unsure, but who soon were swimming in the language as if it were no big deal. Every night produced a new discovery, a new delight.
You shoulda been there.
