A Midsummer Night's Dream

My Directorial Debut

During the break between the matinee and evening performances of "The Merchant of Venice," in the fall of 2007, a friend of mine, Molly, asked if I might be interested in co-directing the following semester. Having just come through one of the busiest 2 or 3 week periods of my life getting "Merchant" ready for performances, I was somewhat less than enthused, and told her so. However, we came to my place for a meal, I pulled out my Complete Works of Shakespeare, and we skimmed through some of the comedies. In talking about the prospect, we both got so excited about directing, it became clear that we would be putting in a bid. We were torn between "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Both her dance background and my penchant for color and somewhat larger-than-life design pointed us towards Midsummer. So I did up some sketches, we plotted our ideas, we considered the group's budget, and at the end-of-the-semester meeting, we presented our bid. It went through, and we had Christmas break to do any preliminary work and planning we could to prepare ourselves for auditions.

Auditions went amazingly well, and our cast fell comfortably into place. We had exactly the right number of auditioners for the parts, except for wanting two more fairies in the fairy chorus. I was able to pull in friends of mine to fill those spots. But for every single one of the speaking parts, there was an actor who nailed the audition. Call backs were a breeze; we were absolutely thrilled with most of our appointments, and were down to two actors who had both rocked the same two parts, so we had them read again, and we had the lovers come in one more time to double check the chemistry.

For the most part, Molly and I decided to split the tasks associated with directing. Her theatre experience was almost entirely onstage, while I had a mix of on- and off-stage and was eager to deepen and broaden my base of offstage experience. So she was the primary director as far as actors were concerned, while I put my efforts into the design work. I spent a huge portion of that semester emailing volunteers, setting up times when a seamstress, an actor, and I were all available to meet, and so forth. I went to rehearsals more often than not, and at the end of the evening, Molly would ask about what had gone on with the visuals in the past day or two. We both offered each other our two cents on just about every issue, but ultimately, we trusted each other enough to take care of our separate fields. That said, I am extremely proud of some of the ideas I had for the actors that played out really well in the performances, as well as simple physical things like showing one of the "guys" how to pick up one of the girls or showing fairies how to romp and play with the changeling boy.

We worked from a theme of layers. We felt that the story split nicely into thirds, and we approached costuming, directing, and sets in thirds. There were the rich humans (the lovers and their elder counterparts) the mechanicals, and the fairies. Our set was in 3 layers: the fairy realm in the back, the mechanicals in the middle, and the upper-class humans in the front. We also decided to go with Victorian-inspired costuming on our human cast, giving them layers of textiles in costumes that covered their necks, had long sleeves, and hems at the floor. This fit well with the themes in the lovers' plot. The restrictions of convention, the formality, the way they had to cover genuine emotion in order to be acceptable in proper company were echoed perfectly in the Victorian-esque garb.

The mechanicals wore of a sort of generic peasant garb, not as layered or starched or restrictive as the costumes of the richer folk, but certainly not as flowy or loose as the fairies. This to us showed the more genuine emotions and the much freer expression of the lower class folks, as well as their closeness to the natural world, and the supernatural, rather than determining to live in human constructs of the upper class.

Our fairy cast was costumed in ways that revealed a bit more flesh. Their costumes were still layered, but much less structured, favoring drapes and folds and tucks over pleats and frills and hems. As much as possible we avoided strong straight edges, and let the materials flow.

For the most part, makeup on the human characters was very straight forward. One of the only challenges was reminding the makeup artists that while they had been trained to do makeup for larger theatres, we were working in a much more intimate auditorium (under 400 capacity) so their details could be much finer than what they were accustomed to. We did have four character to age, and used basic techniques for that. We also had three ladies playing males, so I gave myself an on-the-job crash course on that. Two of them got beards, which aside from being time consuming to apply, did a whole lot of the work for us. On the third gender transformation, our actress was playing a beardless young man, so I really got to work with contouring; highlighting the jaw, broadening the nose, as well as the thicker brows like those I had done on the other girls playing guys.

The fairies were a whole different barrel of monkeys. I decided early on that I wanted the female fairies to be "albino" so we purchased several white-blond wigs and a couple of cakes of "geisha" foundation. On the day of the initial makeup consultations, about three weeks in advance of performances, we did broad color washes and occasional streaks in colors coordinating with the individual fairy's costume. As time progressed, and the actresses took over their own makeup, I noticed that the color washes were becoming smaller and the streaks more prominent. I let them have their fun.

For the male fairies, I wanted to do something equally non-human with the makeup, but very different from the female fairies. I went with a fox inspired look. We started with an orangey brown foundation, added big bushy eyebrows, and drew the dark color from the brows down the sides of the nose. With eyeliner we did something of an exaggerated cat eye, to make the eyes seem more angled, and then we applied a fairly heavy coat of white shadow from lash to brow. It made for a very animalistic look. Once again, as the performances neared I saw the makeup changing, and as one might expect of boys in makeup, getting subtler. Except Oberon's, which kind of exploded. C'est la vie.

I kept our sets simple. The rich folk did their scenes in front of a black curtain, with chairs or benches added as needed. A pair of eight-foot-square wall panels and a pair of sawhorses implied a farm yard for the mechanicals. The fairies did their scenes in the magical forest of course. For the larger trees, we painted burlap in browns and greens, and then hung them in stylized tree shapes from the fly bars. Then we went to the river and collected oodles of the tall slender reeds which grow there. We put them in small buckets filled with sand and draped extra burlap around the buckets, and had some shrub-like growth under our canopy.

The simplicity of our sets and the amazingness of our lighting (I'll get to that in just a moment!) made for some of the best transitions I've seen in a small theatre. The play started when Peaseblossom emerged from a "thicket" on the main floor of the auditorium. She was dressed all in green and had been hiding behind a collection of potted plants in one corner of the audience since before the doors were opened to the audience. From inside the thicket, she lit her lantern to the gasps and giggles of the audience, and explored her way up the steps. As she came to the curtain, it opened for her onto a still dark stage. As she progressed towards the back wall of the stage, the bright lights of the fairy world slowly grew and more fairies danced in from the wings, their multi-hued fairy lights aglow. After a moment, the stately king and queen of the fairies entered from opposite sides, silhouetted against the reds and oranges and blues, and brought the fairies to their purpose. As though by magic, they called the burlap trees down from the sky. They danced the shrubs into place, and the king and queen, while the lights fell once more, called the curtains to close again, and the play began.

Throughout the show, we maintained the idea of the fairies controlling the physical world. They could, on occasion, be seen to be observing the pursuits of the lovers from behind the transparent trees. At times, a fairy's giggle could be heard during the mechanicals' rehearsals. Perhaps best of all though, were the scene changes. That's right, scene changes. A dim variation on the fairy lights would come up, and the fairies would dance and spin their way across, removing one set while leaving another in its place. My favorite part of the scene change each night was when Mustardseed came sprinting from the wings, grabbed the last chair mid-pirouette, and disappeared off the other side almost before you could register where the chair had gone.

While Molly and I are incredibly proud of this show, there was one other person without whose contributions the show would have flopped. Zachary Garber was our go-to guy. He knew about all of the technical aspects both Molly and I lacked. He was our lighting god. The only way to make burlap trees and buckets of sticks look amazing is with a talented lighting guy. A gobo makes all the difference in the world for a plain white drop. He knew how to program lights, and schedule them, and take our vague directions and make them reality... "Could it be a little... fairy-er?" we would ask, and he would make it a little fairy-er. He was also a huge help with construction, orchestrating things backstage, and photography. Huge thanks and kudos to Zachary.

Molly and I sat back and watched every night, scarcely able to believe that we had brought together this opulent show before us. We had been stretched, and grew. We had been given challenges, and met them. We were fulfilled and exhausted. We gave it our all and could not have been prouder. There is no event in my life that I can compare with the exultation I felt during each performance, and even now, almost two years later, when I think back on what we accomplished.

When we started seeing and hearing reviews around campus, I was flabbergasted. Every comment we heard was favorable. People enjoyed the action and the humor that we incorporated, and understood the dialogue (always a concern with Shakespeare, but one we hoped to adress through clear actions and expressions.) The most meaningful comments for me came from the college art faculty. One prof, known for his love of art, Shakespeare, theatre in general, and his harsh criticisms of all three, delivered a glowing review of what we had done with the visuals, and I was thrilled. Another response that meant a lot to me came from the woman in charge of the college's art acquisitions, who also complimented me and said she looked forward to seeing what I do in the future.

I would like to, one more time, thank the audience, my cast, my crew, and my co-director. Without every single one of you, this show could never have been all that it was. Thank you.


Photography in this entry by James Ratchford, Zachary Garber, and Molly Wilson