design by Michael Collin

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Joe Haj
OSF 2020

Dramaturgy by Isabel Smith-Bernstein

Here you’ll find information about a Midsummer Night’s Dream that I deemed important enough to put onto the internet. If I find something new I’ll add a new page and put it up here as well. If you don’t see something or just want to talk about something please let me know (I’m friendly):

ismithbern@gmail.com

-Isabel

a bit about the play

"I am amazed and know not what to say" Hermia says at the end of the lovers show down in the woods.

It is too easy to overlook-his word "amaze" which I think contains multitudes about this play. For Shakespeare, the word "amaze" means to be inside of a literal maze--to be hopelessly lost. Wondrously lost.

Theseus opens the play-a figure from Greek mythology who is perhaps most famous for finding his way out of a maze and outsmarting a Minotaur. So immediately we are in a world of mythology. This world is the container which holds all other worlds. Midsummer's world is one of possibility, one which effortlessly blends different lore. There's no one source text for this play, instead there's about seventeen and counting. We see Latin comedy, Greek mythology, French novels, Chaucer's cynicism, Spenserian fairies, English folklore, and a touch of the Bible all blended into one play. The genres, imagery, allegory, sources all meld into each other, materializing and fading away like a dream. Within the story will find what we can hold onto , what speaks to us at that particular moment. We will interpret a Midsummer Night's Dream like, well, a dream.

"I am amazed" says Hermia. And at this point in the play, that's how the mortals--our avatars within the play--feel. Confused and literally lost in the woods just outside Athens. It seems that this is how Shakespeare wants us to feel too. Midsummer is one of Shakespeare's most structurally perfect plays. It's a palindrome. from Athens to the mechanicals to the forest to the mechanicals back to Athens. From the ordered and the familiar to something comfortable to the magical chaos back to comfort and finally back to order-or is it? The faeries come back after the mechanicals leave. The palindrome begins again but this time Shakespeare doesn't lead us out. It's up to us. He has given us the map.