Festival Preview: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

TROUPE 5464’S PRODUCTION

In Troupe 5464’s version of Midsummer, Theseus has recently executed a hostile takeover of Amazons, a rival Athenian factory, but then falls in love with that company’s CEO, Hippolyta. The amateur actors are Athenian factory workers. And the entire story takes place against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, layered with steampunk-inspired design and music.

“Having done a traditional Midsummer in fall 2008, we were ready to take on the show again, and we had the right company to take up the challenge,” co-director Andrea Lee Roney said. “As I worked with the script over the summer to scale it down to about 2 hours and 15 minutes, I began to toy with the idea of producing a nontraditional Midsummer that would engage the student company and student audiences while being true to the script and Shakespeare’s intent.”

Roney proposed the steampunk idea, while her co-director Debra Buckner dived into bringing that influence to the dance, movement, and music in the piece. “What we were determined not to do was force Midsummer into steampunk but rather to discover a way truthfully and organically to find steampunk in Midsummer,” Roney said. “Steampunk is about anachronisms. Shakespeare is full of anachronisms. He may have set Midsummer in classical Athens, but the culture is pure Elizabethan, and Victorian social structure is similar to the Elizabethans.”

Students spent the first three to four weeks of rehearsal in Roney’s classroom working through the text. “We go line by line. The students have their phones ready to Google definitions of words and references, so we are doing dramaturgy at the same time,” Roney said. “We also do improv, with students creating their own lines in contemporary English to get to given circumstances, character actions and objectives, and tactics. Then we go into blocking. They have to know what they are saying and why before moving.”

Thespian senior Molly Hofstaedter, who plays Helena, encourages student actors to push past their initial intimidation of Shakespeare. “So many Thespians I’ve interacted with hold Shakespeare on a sort of unreachable pedestal,” she said. “While the prestige that Shakespeare’s work carries should be recognized, it should also be known that the text is not the slightest bit inaccessible. He’s simply telling a story through language we aren’t necessarily used to. With patience and diligence, Shakespeare’s words are totally translatable and can be broken down by idea.”

Midsummer’s story definitely appealed to Roney’s students. “The young lovers talking at cross-purposes resonated with them — it happens all the time in North Penn’s hallways,” Roney said. “And, of course, there’s the innocence and passion of the mechanicals, who are trying so hard to do a good play and fall so short. It’s just been a wonderful romp playing with all those themes, then finding the physicality.”

Hofstaedter was surprised by how relatable she found Shakespeare’s characters. “What really stuck with me was how often I’d witnessed the same situations Helena experiences both in my own life and in the lives of my friends,” she said. “Midsummer was set in ancient Greece, yet the feelings of rejection, blind love, and misunderstanding that Helena goes through remain common today. It dawned on me why, even after 400 years, Shakespeare is still relevant. He writes about human nature and, though we live in a very different time, we still love, hate, yearn for things, and desire to achieve our goals.”

Roney strives to schedule a Shakespeare play every three years to ensure every theatre student has the experience of working on his scripts during their time in the North Penn program. “I think you learn best from the best,” said Roney. “It doesn’t get better than Shakespeare for developing characters, playing with words, and engaging in dramaturgy. I truly believe anyone can get Shakespeare once you take the fear away. Shakespeare was a practical man of theatre. He wanted his plays to speak to people. Frankly, I think he’s rolling over in his grave the way we introduce Shakespeare to our students in many English classrooms. He’s meant to be seen and heard.”

For Hofstaedter, the reaction of her peers to experiencing Shakespeare onstage was one of the most exciting aspects of the production. “I’ve sat in many English classes where students groan at the mention of Shakespeare, but so many of the same people raved about our production,” she said. “Hearing those students say, ‘I like Shakespeare now’ or ‘Shakespeare finally makes sense,’ and knowing that we accomplished that through our work was so rewarding. I think that shows another way that theatre is so valuable in the world of education.”