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Title, Premiere and Location

 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Premiered 1988

Performances: 1988 -- Radford University, Radford, VA; Warsaw, VA; Washington, VA; Powhatan, VA; Norcatur, KS; New Perf. Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Agassiz Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY; Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.; The Flood Zone, Richmond, VA; Blue Mountain Community College, Pendleton, OR; Alcorn State University, Alcorn, MS. 1989 -- Alden Theatre, McLean, VA; Dinwiddie, VA; Theatre IV, Richmond, VA; West Virginia State College, Institute, WV. 1990 -- University of Maine, Machias, ME; College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME. 1992 -- Highways, Santa Monica, CA.

 

 

 

Title, Premiere and Location Produced By Synopsis Staff Cast Subsequent Performances or Productions Special Notes Articles, Reviews, and other Links

 

 

 

Produced By

Synopsis

 

Shakespeare's comedy set in a contemporary parochial school with Javanese-style shadow puppets as the Fairies and a set of table lamps as the "Rude Mechanicals."

 

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Staff

Director - Bill Rauch

Stage Manager - Alison Carey

Technical Director - Ben Cobb

Music Driector - David Reiffel

Set and Puppet Design, Puppet Construction - Lynn Jeffries

Costume Design and Construction - Sal Taschetta

Technical Assistant - Mary-Ann Greanier

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Cast

 

Father Theseus, headmaster, and Lighting Operator	Ben Cobb
Sister Hippolyta, Spanish Teacher and Spotlight Operator	Gail Berrigan, later Amy Brenneman
Ms. Philostrate, resource specialist and Pupeteer and Voice of Puck	Lynn Jeffries
Mr. Egeus, fatehr to Hermia and Sound Operator and Voice of Oberon	David Reiffel
Hermia, a student	Alison Carey
Demetrius, a student	Peter Howard
Lysander, a student	Chrisopther Moore
Helena, a student	Nela Wagman, later Ashby Semple

 

Note: The Mechanicals in this production were played by various lamps/lights, and the Fairies were shadow puppets (listed as Shadows in the program).

 

 

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Subsequent Performances or Productions

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Special Notes

 

Lynn Jeffries, 7/6/2008

 

Bill had been interested for a while in doing a pared-down MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM that concentrated on the lovers. He had experimented with this idea during our first residency in Newport News, Virginia, where we taught a summer theater program for teenagers. We staged four short pieces with the students, and the one Bill directed was just the lovers' scenes from MIDSUMMER. Bill decided to bring back this idea for a touring show that we were going to create in the winter of '87-'88. I'm pretty sure he suggested that I do the fairies as shadow puppets. He wasn't involved with my puppet shows at Harvard, but he had seen them. I think he was also the one who came up with the odd idea of having the rude mechanicals played by lamps. What this meant was that their scenes were entirely cut, and replaced by brief moments of business with props. I remember Bill talking to me over the phone - I was home, so maybe it was Christmas - about this idea that the whole concept would revolve around light and shadow, and that the set would be nothing but shadow screens and light bulbs.

 

Initially, the fairies had no dialogue, either, except for Puck and Oberon, because they interact with the lovers. So I had to do all the Titania and Bottom scenes visually. Perhaps because of this, we ended up with a fairly explicit sex scene between Bottom (a table lamp with an articulated cord), and Titania (with her entire torso transformed into an electrical outlet). This sometimes made Bill anxious when there were thirteen-year-olds in the audience, but we never cut or toned down the scene, even after we decided to let Titania and Bottom talk. I did, however, add a plug-shaped condom at some point. I didn't want to promote unsafe sex at the height of the AIDS crisis, even though you can't transmit a virus through electrical current.

 

I suspect I might have been the one to suggest that we let Titania speak. It was a little disturbing that the male fairies had a voice, and not the only female fairy. So in the remount of the show, the actor who played Hippolyta voiced Titania, and the actor who played Theseus voiced Oberon, which he had been doing all along. Still later, even Bottom got a voice, I think.

 

This was the first time I had done shadow puppets as part of a regular theater piece, and also my first and only major role in a Cornerstone show until recently. (I had small roles in I CAN'T PAY THE RENT and THREE SISTERS FROM WEST VIRGINIA). I don't have any interest in acting. For me the hardest part of MIDSUMMER were the brief moments when I came onstage as Theseus' assistant, Philostrate. But I love puppeteering. I voiced and manipulated Puck, and I performed each puppet scene with whichever actor was available at that moment in the show.

 

I played Philostrate because of the other tidy conceit of the show, which was that all the adults had tech roles. Theseus ran the lights from a table stage right, and Egeus ran the sound from a table stage left. Hippolyta ran a follow-spot, and Philostrate was the lead puppeteer. So the adults were constantly manipulating the environment around the lovers.

 

 

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