NYTimes.com: Chances are you’ve either seen it or have been in it. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is sort of like the Shakespearean “Godspell” in that sense. And not unsurprisingly, the summer is a particularly vibrant time for productions of the comedy, which works well in an outdoor setting — what with those enchanted fairy-filled woods outside Athens, where lovers’ woes are mystically resolved.
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For me, it seems as though what makes ‘Midsummer’ so open to alterations is it’s ability to enchant most anyone. The show itself is a hilarious mix of romance, magic, and plot twists which allow the story to be reconfigured in so many and still be ‘Midsummer’. I agree with Mr. Kent on his view of the show’s language, which can lend itself to a younger audience with understandable wording and the absence of references to things before our time, but what makes it so incredible is that though the show is good for children it still entertains an older audience with the edgy humor that Shakespeare often wrote. On an alternate subject, I see the use of social networking to connect with maybe an audience with whom Shakespeare’s works may not be very familiar, or those who just can’t be in the UK to go to the Royal Shakespeare Company, to be an amazing use of the tool that is the internet to open up the option of Shakespeare to so many people. I think it’s really very cool that ‘Midsummer’ can even apply itself to the internet, the show is so flexible and it’s written in such a way that even if no production were to ever be the same as the next, the possibilities would remain endless.
The first time I was introduced to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was in my eight grade English class. I "played" a fairy (aka I stood at the front of the class in a funny hat and child's costume wings and read lines that said God knows what). Coincidentally though, my school will be putting on this play next season, and hopefully I'll be able to redeem myself in other ways. Putting on this show gets me really excited because I would love to see how adaptable it could be after reading the script again. I'm hoping that I'll be able to convince my director to put more of a modern spin on it and have it set in more recent times. Again, I haven't read the script in a long time so I don't know how well it would work out or if it would at all. Also, my director is a very traditional woman, so I'll most likely have to convince her to push boundaries in other ways. In the end though I'll be staying late building obscene amounts of trees either way.
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