Reimagining a Midsummer Night's Dream

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Art That Lives 2 Bard’s Bio 2 The First Folio 3 Shakespeare’s England 4 The Renaissance Theater 5 Barbara Gaines Criss Henderson Courtyard-style Theater 6 Artistic Director Executive Director On the Road: A Brief History of Touring Shakespeare 8 Timeline 10 Chicago Shakespeare Theater is Chicago’s professional theater dedi- cated to the works of William Shakespeare. Founded as Shakespeare Shakespeare’s Repertory in 1986, the company moved to its seven-story home on Navy Pier in 1999. In its Elizabethan-style courtyard theater, 500 seats on three A Midsummer Night's Dream levels wrap around a deep thrust stage—with only nine rows separating the farthest seat from the stage. Chicago Shakespeare also features a Dramatis Personae 12 flexible 180-seat black box studio theater, a Teacher Resource Center, and The Story 13 Who's Who: What's in a Name? 13 a Shakespeare specialty bookstall. Act-by-Act Synopsis 14 Now in its twenty-seventh season, the Theater has produced nearly the en- Something Borrowed, Something New… tire Shakespeare canon: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopa- Shakespeare's Sources 15 tra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Henry The Nature of Comedy 17 IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, Henry VIII, Julius A History of Dreams 18 Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, Measure Scholars’ Perspectives for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Pericles, Spirits of Another Sort 20 Richard II, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The What the Critics Say 21 Tempest, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The Winter’s Tale. A Play Comes to Life Chicago Shakespeare Theater was the 2008 recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award. Chicago’s Jeff Awards year after year have honored A Midsummer Night's Dream the Theater, including repeated awards for Best Production and Best Di- in Performance 26 rector, the two highest honors in Chicago theater. A Conversation with the Director 29 Since Chicago Shakespeare’s founding, its programming for young audi- Classroom Activities and Resources ences has been an essential element in the realization of its mission. Team Shakespeare supports education in our schools, where Shakespeare is Before You Read the Play 32 part of every required curriculum. As a theater within a multicultural city, As You Read the Play 39 we are committed to bringing Shakespeare to a young and diverse audi- After You Read the Play 54 ence of 40,000 students each year. Team Shakespeare’s programming The Performance: Preparing and Reflecting 57 includes free teacher workshops, student matinees of main stage shows, Strategies for Using Film to Teach Shakespeare 63 post-performance discussions, comprehensive teacher handbooks, and Theater Warm-ups 71 an abridged, original production each year of one of the “curriculum Techno Shakespeare 76 plays.” Team Shakespeare offers a region-wide forum for new vision and Suggested Readings 81 enthusiasm for teaching Shakespeare in our schools. In 2012, the Fol- ger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, honored that vision with the prestigious Shakespeare Steward Award. The 2013-14 Season offers a Acknowledgments student matinee series for three of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s full- This Teacher Handbook grew out of a team effort of teachers past length productions: in the fall semester, Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond and present, Chicago Shakespeare Theater artists, interns, educa- Rostand; and in the spring, Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor tors, and scholars. Interns Rebecca Dumain, Samuel Evola and Julie and Henry V. Also this spring, a 75-minute abridged version of A Midsum- Strassel revised a previous edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream mer Night’s Dream will be performed at the Theater on Navy Pier and will handbook for this production. Chicago Shakespeare Theater grate- tour to schools and theaters across the region. We hope that you and your fully acknowledges the groundbreaking and indelible work of Dr. Rex Gibson and the Cambridge School Shakespeare Series, and students will enjoy our work—and Shakespeare’s creative genius brought The Folger Shakespeare Institute, whose contributions to the field to life on stage. of teaching have helped shape our own work through the years. ©2013, Chicago Shakespeare Theater Marilyn J Halperin Director of Education Jason Harrington Education Outreach Manager Molly Topper Learning Programs Manager A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Written by William Shakespeare Directed by David H. Bell elcome to the woods just beyond the gates of the city, where one small Wflower can kindle love—or just kill it. As wanderers here, we feel hopeless and alone one moment and, in the next, sur- rounded by creatures only our imagination can conjure. We may forget who we are. We may turn on our best friend. Or, most unimaginable of all, fall head-over-heels in love with, well, an ass… The forest is strange, terrifying—and beauti- ful. It can be life-changing. The fairy king and queen who reign here are currently locked in a marital battle—which happen to be disrupting the entire natural world in the process. Shakespeare invites us along, bringing no other luggage than our own imaginative powers. Get ready for a wild ride. ✷ Art That Lives How can you help us give you the rama is a living art. It is written to be performed live before a group best performance we can? Dof people who form an audience ✷ Please, no talking during the performance It dis- and together experience a play. Cave tracts the actors as well as the people sitting nearby. paintings depicting men disguised as animals reveal that since ancient ✷ Respond naturally to our play Emotions are part of times, impersonation and imitation drama. We hope that you'll laugh, cry and even gasp— have served humans in their efforts to but as a natural response to the story, and not in order express themselves and to communicate. The drama of west- to distract attention from the stage. ern civilization has its roots in the ancient Greeks’ religious ritu- als and observances. ✷ Please leave all “noisemakers”—food, gum, cell phones, iPods, etc.—back at school or on the bus Until the Renaissance, when Shakespeare wrote, drama was In a quiet theater, wrappers and munching are heard by closely tied to religious beliefs and practice. Drama not only all, the actors included. depicts human communication, it is human communication. In theater, unlike television or film, there is a two-way communica- ✷ No photographs of any kind, please Flashbulbs tion that occurs between the actors and their audience. The can make the actors lose their focus and can be dan- audience hears and sees the actors, and the actors hear and gerous. Digital cameras, along with all other kinds of see the audience. We are used to thinking about the actors’ recording devices, are prohibited, as is text-messaging. roles in a play, but may find it strange to imagine ourselves, the audience, playing an important role in this living art. Because the art lives, each production is guaranteed to be different, de- Bard’s Bio pending in part upon an audience’s response. Live drama is the sharing of human experience, intensely and immediately, in he exact date of William Shake- the theater, which momentarily becomes our universe. speare’s birth is not known, but This baptism, traditionally three A live theater production depends upon its audience. The best days after a child’s birth, was record- performances depend upon the best actors—and the best au- ed on April 26, 1564. His father John diences. When the actors sense a responsive, interested au- Shakespeare was a tanner, glover, dience, their work is at its best—full of animation and energy. grain dealer and prominent town of- When the actors sense disinterest, they too are distracted and ficial of the thriving market town of the play they create is less interesting. One actor described Stratford-upon-Avon. His mother Mary Arden was the daugh- the experience of live performance as a story told by the actors ter of a prosperous, educated farmer. Though the records are and audience together. In this sense, you are also a storyteller lost, Shakespeare undoubtedly attended Stratford’s grammar in the experience of live theater. We hope you’ll enjoy your school, where he would have acquired some knowledge of role—and will help us to give you a dramatic experience that Latin and Greek and the classical writers. There is no record you’ll always remember. that Shakespeare acquired a university education of any kind. [Theatrical performance] is essentially a sociable, com- Some skeptical scholars have raised doubts about whether munal affair. This is important. To resist this is, I think, Shakespeare, due to his relatively average level of education to ruin one of the very important parts of the theatrical and humble origins, could have possibly written what has experience. Let the play and let the fact that temporarily long been considered the best verse drama composed in the you are not your private self, but a member of a closely English language. But not until 1769, 150 years after Shake- fused group, make it easy for the performance to ’take you out of yourself.’ This, I suggest, is the object of go- speare’s death, did these theories arise—and, to all appear- ing to a play…to be taken out of yourself, out of your ances, Shakespeare’s contemporaries and immediate succes- ordinary life, away from the ordinary world of everyday.

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