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In fairy tales, the woods are always a bit enchanted, full of magic but often also foreboding with a sense of mystery. This summer, a South Bay theater company enchants a local forest with a well-known fairy story, written in language that can sometimes evoke a sense of mystery for audiences.
However, the Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company aims to dispel the ominous mists of arcane language around William Shakespeare's works and emphasize the magic of the Bard with a production of his pastoral romp A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play opens on Aug. 22 and will be presented outdoors in the appropriately lush forest setting of Sanborn-Skyline County Park in Saratoga. And even the groundlings at the Globe Theatre didn't get such a good deal: the shows are free.
The fitting natural backdrop was one reason the company chose to stage the show, says company dramaturge Doll Piccotto, who is directing the production. "For the venue that we're in--Sanborn Park--the natural atmosphere makes it a beautiful choice. It's absolutely perfect," she says. Additionally, the "resident Shakespeare nerd" of the company has particular knowledge of the play, which should bring audiences a greater understanding of the work--and perhaps make the cast careful of flubbing lines in rehearsal. "The company wanted me to direct, and this is the show that I did my senior thesis on," says Piccotto. "It's the one that I'm most familiar with. I've got the whole thing memorized."
Piccotto had a lot to study. Although A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's lighter works, the play, set in ancient Greece, juggles more than a dozen characters as they fall in and out of love and lust, and as they fall out with each other. The characters can be accounted for in three groups: the Lovers, comprised of young Athenian nobles all variously thwarted in their romances; the Mechanicals, a group of working-class citizens rehearsing a play to present at the wedding of two of the nobles; and lastly, the Fairies, mischief-minded imps inhabiting the woods outside of Athens who stir up more trouble than even they intended when they cross paths with the other two groups.
Piccotto has ensured that everyone can follow the action by focusing on making the play's Elizabethan English seem less opaque, for those on both sides of the stage. "The first thing I do, being a dramaturge, is to make sure the actors know what they're saying. If they don't, nobody's going to," she says.
The production also takes advantage of its natural setting to help members of the audience put themselves in the places of the characters--in literal terms, that's in the woods. "One thing that's odd to me is the fact that we're building a set, and we have a tree and rocks in the middle of this place where we have actual trees and rocks. It always looks a little odd to me that way," Piccotto laughs. "But we're also using some of the natural surrounding areas. I wanted to add some little things to the story to make people in the audience actually sit there and realize we really are in the middle of nowhere and there are fairies running around. You might hear rustlings in the bushes or things under the bridge. We'd like to give people the kind of feeling that the Lovers feel when they're in the forest--isolation. That we're really out in the middle of nowhere and anything could happen and it's kind of scary, but kind of fun."
With this production, it seems likely that audiences will not only feel the magic of the play, but also get a sense of how enchanting Shakespeare's writing really can be. "It's the only play Shakespeare didn't really base on anything else--he based Romeo & Juliet off of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but this is the play that actually came most from his own head, and I'd love for people to really appreciate the imagination of this man," says Piccotto. "He created some of the most enduring characters of all time, and people always say how fantastic he is for that, but in this play, you can really see just how creative he is, and in the play within a play [staged by the Mechanicals], just how funny he is.
"I'd really like everyone to just have a lot of fun--that's our main goal--but I would love for people to walk away loving the play as much as I do," says Piccotto. "It's a fantastic story and we've got a fantastic cast."
The Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company presents A Midsummer Night's Dream Aug. 22Sep. 14 (every FridaySunday at 7 p.m.) at Sanborn-Skyline County Park, 16055 Sanborn Road (off Highway 9), Saratoga. All performances are free. Audience members are encouraged to bring chairs and blankets. For more information, call 408.298.0649 or see www.shadyshakes.org.
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