|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
||
A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Shakespeare for the Entire Family
By Nate
Cavalieri
Last
year's production of Shakespeare's As You Like It
employed a troupe of musicians to keep the performance
lively.
PHOTOGRAPH BY
MARK
GRAHAM
JUNE 22, 1999--Beginning July 1, Hall Auditorium will be the home of fairy puppets, moonstruck lovers, and slapstick comedians for the Black River Theater Company production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Staged for family audiences, the performance is the company's third free Shakespearean production in as many years.
The Black River Theater Company is a semiprofessional company operating under the auspices of Oberlin College. The productions feature alumni, community, faculty, and local equity and non-equity actors.
"Family was really the concept behind this thing," says Paul Moser, artistic director of the company and associate professor of theater at Oberlin College. "There are parts of the plot which are incomprehensible to kids because of the archaic language, and that happens in Shakespeare. Here and there we will change a word to make it more understandable."
"We have had people come who have never been to Shakespeare who have had a good time, and it is a nice way to expose kids to it and we've worked very hard to make the whole thing very accessible," he says.
Slight adjustments to the Elizabethan script were not their only efforts to make the play accessible to new audiences. Large rod-operated puppets and shadow puppets help the actors make the story entertaining, not to mention an original score. Andrew Bertoni, a technician in the conservatory's piano shop, wrote the score and will perform it on stage.
To accommodate the company's growing following, this year's production graces the main stage of Oberlin College's in Hall Auditorium. Last year they saw their audience double from the previous summer. They expect another increase this year, as more people are aware of the production.
Moser cofounded the Black River Theater Company six years ago after years of working with more exclusive regional summer-theater programs. He enjoys the accessibility of the company's summer productions.
"Since the government doesn't subsidize not-for-profit groups that much, the ticket prices for regional theater are really high so the audience represents a very small part of our society," Moser says. "To be involved with that gets pretty frustrating if you have any idealism about art at all."
The show, which opens July 1 and runs
through July 18, takes place in Oberlin College's Hall
Auditorium, which is located on Route 58 between the Allen
Memorial Art Museum and the Oberlin Inn. The productions
begin Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7
P.M.,
with a Sunday matinee at 2. Information can be obtained
through the Central Ticket Service at
Please send comments, questions, and suggestions about Oberlin Online news and feature articles to Linda.Grashoff@oberlin.edu.
