A Midsummer Night's Dream: the avant-garde version

[madbaker]

Well, sort of. It wasn't the stereotypical avant-garde project; no black berets, giant vaginas, or people throwing excrement. (For which I am thankful.)

We went to see this at San Jose Rep last night; one of my few keeping-in-touch friends from high school was running the sound board and gave us tickets for Xmas. A very cool idea, I thought. Even if we didn't get to spend more than 10 minutes with him.

I didn't hate the show. OTOH, I'm glad we didn't buy tickets for it. The people sitting next to us walked out after intermission.

Let's see... they didn't cut much from the script, as it ran 2 hours 15 minutes. The original concept was "Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath" staging, but they apparently jettisoned that (keeping the costume style) a week in. Then they went to interpretive ballet (while keeping the spoken parts). Eight-person cast.

It coulda been much worse. The actors were talented. Bottom and Puck were both nicely underplayed - usually the actor in those roles goes waaaay over the top.

Let's just say it was a New Yawk acting company, I'm sure this production will be very well received in the NY art scene, and leave it at that.

My wife the art student probably thinks I'm a stick-in-the mud, but I prefer traditional staging. That doesn't have to mean period-style costumes, although I admit that's my preference, go figure. For example, the vaguely Japanese-oid staging of Henry IV a few years back worked all right.

I dunno, I guess alternate staging for the sake of "putting your own stamp on it" generally leaves me cold.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

"Putting your own stamp on" Shakespeare seems like hubris to me.

[wingedcorset.livejournal.com]

What, then are some good reasons for alternate staging? (I'm in a theatre philosophy sort of a class right now, so I've been thinking aobut this stuff.)

Alternate staging can produce some very interesting theatre, but, like anything else in theatre, there has to be a reason. That reason can just be to make people think, but it'll fall flat on it's face if there isn't a reason.
Brecht wanted to make people think about what they were seeing instead of getting caught up in the story that was taking place. He used all sort of things as reminders that this wasn't real (leaving the house lights on, leaving the curtain half up during scene shifts, etc.).
Theatre as an escape can be a very powerful thing. It's what brings a lot of people into the theatre. I originally became a theatre brat because it was a whole different world. I stayed because of the community it brings together. I'm very interested in the community aspect of theatre, and how that interacts with high quality theatre. Traditionally there is much more community in lower level theatre than in higher level theatre. There isn't really a reason for that, that I can see.

Wow. This took a very different turn than I was expecting. Sorry.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Yep, it needs to have a reason. But it also needs to *work*. I've been to a few repackaged Shakespeares that clearly were trying to say something, but missed entirely.

The one that comes most readily to mind was MacBeth set in Vietnam. Killing your King has all this emotional weight behind it, plus God having anointed him and so on. Killing your unit commander is a bad idea, but doesn't have the emotional depth. And the constant chopper noises in the surround-sound didn't really help, either.

[maestrateresa.livejournal.com]

Very interesting hearing about this production from two different perspectives...my housemate went to see it the other day and enjoyed it enormously...liked a lot of the alternative staging bits, for example. It wasn't that he was entirely non-critical, but came out with a much more positive conclusion.

Re:

[corva.livejournal.com]

Nodnod, I was listening to fie things about it yesterday. The thing that stuck in my in my brain was something like "how wonderfully feral the fey where". I'd like to have seen this I think.