Pittsburgh in the Round: There are ultimately two questions audience members will ask themselves at the outset of any contemporary Shakespeare production: what has the production done to modernize the play and what, if anything, have they done to subvert it? Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, arguably the most popular of Shakespeare’s comedies, usually offer little in terms of subversion, but one prop cell phone will inevitably change the reading of even the most otherwise straight-up portrayal of the world’s first 80’s sitcom episode.
2 comments:
I have experienced a modernized Midsummer Night's dream first hand and it is scary. Having the fairies dance to My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard and having Bottom fist fight almost every character he sees as if he were in a Dr. Dolittle version of Rocky is not the proper way to treat Shakespeare's work. I was humiliated to be apart of the production and honestly if it wasn't for the people involved, which i so much cared for, I most likely would have walked away. That being said, I do believe that Shakespeare's work can be done with a modern twist successfully. In addition, out of all of his plays I believe that Midsummer does lean toward this the most. The humor and the love in this play still pull on the same emotions of people's hearts today as they did all those many years ago in the Globe. Perhaps that is why the play is regarded as one of his most successful?. I do hope this production stuns its audience with a modern twist on this great play (just hopefully not stunned in the way my production of it went!)
I definitely related to the author’s comment about some people thinking Shakespeare is speaking a foreign language. (I think that we have all seen that in an English class.) I agree with the author that actors in a contemporary Shakespeare production need to walk the line between being clear in gestures and tone to help the audience follow dense language and being overly exaggerated. Aside from the dense language, there are archaic words and allusions that would have been clearer in a different era. These aren’t reasons to stop putting on Shakespeare productions with original text, but to be aware of additional challenges. I liked that the designers didn’t choose Elizabethan era or a modern style for the production, but somewhere in between. I think that a lot of shows fall into a pattern of original or present day and not necessarily choosing an entirely different context. And a story like A Midsummer Night’s Dream doesn’t require much in terms of time and space beyond a forest.
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