Excitement is building for this year’s Spring play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. The performance dates span the weekend of April 11-13. This year’s production faces some challenges as the production timeline, from the first company meeting to opening night, is only around seven weeks.
Both the student directors and Director Monson are thrilled to present this play to the audience. Tennyson Fuhrer, one of the student directors, is very excited, because in his role he will get to interact with the audience, which will be the first time that he gets to do that in a play. For Mayo Stage Door productions there hasn’t been any sort of audience interaction for the last few plays; the only other recent one was Addams Family. Fuhrer is also looking forward to getting to chase around other characters, as well as climb a tree.
The tech crew watches Mrs. Monson lead actors in a dynamic warm up.
Moving to the technical side, the costuming techniques needed are very broad since the play involves fairies, royalty, and regular people (“the mechanicals”). According to first-time costuming lead, Elanor Groves, “We are taking a historical approach to the costuming as we already had many Shakespeare era costumes.” While she will not be using 100% historical fabrics the crew are hoping to convey a historical look to the costumes. Groves describes the overall look of the production as being very sparkly and expressed excitement about making the fairy wings. As the whole company knows that Shakespearean language can be difficult to understand, the costuming team has chosen to add handkerchiefs to the costumes of those characters who end up under spells or act in an influenced manner. They are hoping that this can help alleviate some confusion regarding why a character may be acting out of character.
Bela Verma, hair and makeup lead, works to find the right tiara for Leah Dow that will convey the character’s strength.
For most of the cast this will be their first experience doing a Shakespeare play, which comes with some challenges, especially around the language and complexities of the text. Director Monson says that “because of the timeline, it’s a sprint, and there is no time to get into it.” Fuhrer also talked about how much of the cast has never had to dig into Shakespeare like they are being asked to now; he feels as if he wouldn’t be as good if he would have taken AP Lit the year prior. He also wishes people had more confidence in themselves and their understanding of the language.
Another challenge with this play and its timeline involves the limited space due to concerts and other groups needing to use the auditorium. The company will not be able to drill in and permanently establish their sets until a few weeks before opening night. This is extremely different compared to other productions, like their musicals during which they essentially have a monopoly over the stage for weeks and weeks leading up to opening night.
Students listen attentively to Mrs. Monson as she explains the plan for rehearsal.
You can see A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Friday, April 11, or Saturday, April 12. The doors open both nights at 6:30, and the play begins at 7:00. Then there is a matinee performance on Sunday, April 13 at 1:30; the doors will open at 1:00.
Tickets are available now using the QR codes below and at the link the Mayo stage door Instagram’s bio.
