Tragical Mirth Tour | 2007
Cast
Theseus
previously with asc: Le Bret in Cyrano de Bergerac, Theseus and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cassius in Julius Caesar. other theatres: Summer and Winter Season at the Theatre …
Hippolyta
previously with asc: Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sister Claire in Cyrano de Bergerac, Decius Brutus in Julius Caesar. other theatres: 6-year company member with the Hubbard …
Philostrate
previously with asc: 44 roles in 21 productions, including Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac; Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing; Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Warwick in Henry VI, …
Egeus
previously with asc: De Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac, Caesar in Julius Caesar, Egeus and Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. other theatres: Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Glade …
Hermia
previously with asc: Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Calphurnia in Julius Caesar. other theatres: Maria in The Sound of Music and Catherine in Pippin …
Helena
previously with asc: Portia in Julius Caesar, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Duenna in Cyrano de Bergerac. other theatres: Desdemona in Othello (Abingdon Theatre, NY); Miranda in The Tempest …
Lysander
previously with asc: Christian in Cyrano de Bergerac, Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony in Julius Caesar. other theatres: Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (The Hazlitt Theatre, Kent, England); …
Demetrius
previously with asc: Brutus in Julius Caesar, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Montfleury, D’Artagnan in Cyrano de Bergerac. other theatres: Sir Walter Raleigh in The Lost Colony (Lost Colony, …
Oberon
previously with asc: Le Bret in Cyrano de Bergerac, Theseus and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cassius in Julius Caesar. other theatres: Summer and Winter Season at the Theatre …
Titania
previously with asc: Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sister Claire in Cyrano de Bergerac, Decius Brutus in Julius Caesar. other theatres: 6-year company member with the Hubbard …
Puck
previously with asc: 44 roles in 21 productions, including Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac; Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing; Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Warwick in Henry VI, …
First Fairy
previously with asc: Portia in Julius Caesar, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Duenna in Cyrano de Bergerac. other theatres: Desdemona in Othello (Abingdon Theatre, NY); Miranda in The Tempest …
Moth
perviously with asc: 15 roles in 6 productions, including Widow in Taming of the Shrew; Lady Northumberland in Henry IV, Part 2; Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. other theatres: …
Peaseblossom
previously with asc: De Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac, Caesar in Julius Caesar, Egeus and Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. other theatres: Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Glade …
Mustardseed
Aaron has been the Resident Troupe Manager since the 2008 Summer Season. In previous seasons with the ASC, Aaron has directed The Santaland Diaries and A Christmas Carol; been the …
Chris Johnston has over 20 years of theatre experience and more than 120 productions at the American Shakespeare Center.
Peter Quince
Aaron has been the Resident Troupe Manager since the 2008 Summer Season. In previous seasons with the ASC, Aaron has directed The Santaland Diaries and A Christmas Carol; been the …
Nick Bottom
previously with asc: Ragueneau in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Casca in Julius Caesar. other theatres: Verges in Much Ado About Nothing, Prince of Arragon and …
Chris Johnston has over 20 years of theatre experience and more than 120 productions at the American Shakespeare Center.
Robin Starveling
perviously with asc: 15 roles in 6 productions, including Widow in Taming of the Shrew; Lady Northumberland in Henry IV, Part 2; Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. other theatres: …
Snug
previously with asc: De Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac, Caesar in Julius Caesar, Egeus and Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. other theatres: Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Glade …
Artistic Team
Director
Previously for the ASC on Tour, Jaq directed Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream before directing Love’s Labour’s Lost for the ASC’s 2007 Summer/Fall Season. For other …
Assistant Director
Aaron has been the Resident Troupe Manager since the 2008 Summer Season. In previous seasons with the ASC, Aaron has directed The Santaland Diaries and A Christmas Carol; been the …
Costume Designer
Between freelancing gigs in Chicago, Kim returned to the American Shakespeare Center to design A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Tragical Mirth Tour in 06/07 as well as Richard III …
Stuff that happens in the play
- Theseus, Duke of Athens, plans his marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Egeus interrupts to complain that his daughter Hermia has fallen in love with Lysander. Theseus orders Hermia to obey her father and marry Demetrius; otherwise, she will be killed or sent to a nunnery.
- Hermia and Lysander plan to escape to the woods, get married, and live off money from Lysander’s rich aunt.
- Hermia’s friend Helena, who loves Demetrius, reveals the plan to him, and he follows Hermia and Lysander into the woods.
- In the woods, Oberon, the fairy king, and Titania, his queen, quarrel over the possession of an infant boy.
- Oberon sends Puck to bewitch Titania, so that she will fall in love with the first creature she sees when she wakes.
- Bottom, an Athenian laborer, has come to the woods with his fellow workers to rehearse a play for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding celebration.
- Puck places an ass’s head upon Bottom, with whom Titania promptly falls in love.
- Oberon commands Puck to bewitch Demetrius so that he falls in love with Helena; Puck, however, mistakes Lysander for Demetrius.
- Corrections, coupling, and play-going ensue.
Midsummer director’s diary
Today is Friday, June 23rd, 2006, and rehearsals for this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream won’t actually begin for another few weeks. I’m excited about the prospect of directing this production, but also a little daunted. I find this play challenging, on a number of fronts. It’s a play that needs to invoke a kind of theatrical magic, without really using any, and (to paraphrase Bottom) there are parts of this so-called comedy that are just not funny. I should explain…
The play begins with a young woman (Hermia) being ordered to give up the man she loves and wed another, or face the penalty of death, or lifelong abstinence as a nun. Hermia’s best friend Helena is pining away for a man who claims to despise her. From that cheery beginning, we are then transported into a world of hobgoblins, fairies, and sundry monsters, where a ferocious battle is in progress between the armies of Titania the Fairy Queen, and Oberon, the King of the Fairies. As a result of their quarrels, the Earth has suffered (we are told) strange, unseasonal weather, floods, failed harvests, and other depressing phenomena.
So, why is this a “funny” play? Perhaps it is because, despite all the domestic tragedies and disasters going on in the court and in Fairy Land, a bunch of enthusiastic actor-types are preparing to put on a show at Duke Theseus’s wedding day (at night)…and they’re not very good. We laugh at actors who aren’t very good. Were the play to feature a crew of incompetent sailers, or a group of amateurish accountants, I doubt it would have survived to this day. Films like Waiting for Guffman show us that, in fact, we love laughing at actors who aren’t very good. In this play, Bottom and his fellow amateur actors are heroes because they try their best and it doesn’t matter that they aren’t good. It’s their good-natured, doggedly determined way in which they prepare and perform their play that has continued to charm audiences for the past 400 years.
I’m a keen advocate of bare-bones, original stage practice productions of Shakespeare, and yet on this occasion I confess I’d feel happier if I had a battery of technicians on hand to help transport us to Fairy Land and back at the touch of a button. A smidgen of dry ice and some nice mood lighting would surely help matters, wouldn’t it? No, we must create our illusory delights using only the voices and bodies of the actors as the first troupe who performed this play did. It’s going to be tough, I think, but I know the best course of action is to put my faith in the actors in this company to take you on a fabulous journey of the imagination, into the land of dreams and nightmares, the land of loves thwarted and restored. However our production turns out, I sincerely hope that you will be rooting for Bottom and friends when the time comes for the “tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe.”
Very tragical mirth, indeed.
Jaq bessell
Guest Director