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Dreaming of a Midsummer Night at
Park Manor PS
» Students learn new language to perform Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
BY: VANESSA MOSS
A G-rated version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is in the works at Park Manor Public School, with performances set for May 7 and 8.
The cast has been working before, during and after school daily to prepare the complicated piece and director Ted Frey said he is confident they will be ready to hit the stage with enthusiasm in a month.
“I live for this and I hope the kids do too,” he said.
Besides omitting some difficult dialogue and inappropriate actions, the play follows the original script and plot.
Two couples – Hermia and Lysander and Helena and Demetrius – enter the woods one evening after Hermia’s father Egeus tries to force her to marry Demetrius. Once in the forest, a fairy named Puck begins to toy with them. Confusion ensues and the men start falling in love with the wrong women and vice versa.
Meanwhile, Oberon, the king of the fairies, uses magic to make his wife, Titania, fall in love with Bottom, a craftsman whose head has been replaced with that of a donkey.
In the end, all is set right and the couples marry in a group wedding, leaving Puck to recite the final speech.
Park Manor’s version will feature all the traditional characters, along with 20 dancers performing two numbers as “sprites” on a three-level set.
So far, learning the language and understanding parts of the play have been the biggest obstacles, but the nine-member cast has made good progress.
“We help each other a lot which is good,” said Madi Jones, 12 (playing Puck).
“Some of us were terrible at the beginning,” admitted Alex Minor, 12 (Hermia).
Frey gradually introduced the students to the work by first presenting the story as a bigger picture and then focusing on the text.
He found that worked well because “if you take the context away, it’s not enjoyable.”
The teacher also used modern examples to explain confusing concepts until the students were able to act out scenes comfortably using the original tongue.
“Now they’re far enough into the language that contemporary speech sounds strange to them.”
That said, they are not quite experts yet: the iambic pentameter rhythm was just introduced this week, Frey said.
Originally considering Alice in Wonderland for the school’s yearly production, Frey never thought he would end up with Shakespeare. But, the actors have enjoyed the learning curve and said they hope their peers will see the play and be inspired to take on a challenge.
Embodying the complex characters has given many of the students a chance to better their acting skills and overcome their insecurities.
“He [Frey] picks you up by your shell and shakes you out of it,” Angus Docherty, 13 (Bottom), said of his teacher’s motivation.
Because of the play’s dips and peaks in tone, the cast members agreed they are looking forward to showing the audience different sides of their personalities.
Some, like Nathan Jagger, 13 (Lysander), “live to perform,” while others, like Jacob Arseneau, 13 (Oberon, Theseus) are fairly new to the acting world.
Frey noted that the students are willing to work tirelessly on this project, but he wants to make sure they do not get worn out before the shows.
“The better they do, the more I demand. I have to watch that,” he said with a laugh.
Check for updates on the play’s progress in a future issue of the Observer.