By Keiryn Sandahl
On Friday, May 5th, and Saturday, May 6th, the cast and crew of A Midsummer Night’s Dream gathered in their places for the culmination of a semester’s community and preparation, performed in its original English, though cut and adapted to a more suitable length for a student production. As our director, Ms. Geiman, told us afterwards, on those days we “joined a four-hundred year old tradition”.
Like any Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has several interconnected plots: a maiden called Hermia elopes with her true love, Lysander, of whom her father doesn’t approve, while her friend Helena pursues a man who also wants Hermia. Meanwhile, in the woods, Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, have an argument, so the king curses the queen to fall in love with a donkey-headed man, part of a group of craftsmen rehearsing a play to perform at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Athens. However complicated that sounds, it gave over twenty actors opportunities to develop their skills. Some returned from last semester’s production of Kokonut High, while others joined this semester and plunged headfirst into memorizing seventeenth-century English.
A few hours before each performance, we collected in the band room, lent to us by Mr. Kearney. Ms. Geiman, with the help of Mrs. Ho, Mrs. Roylance, Mrs. Conklin, Mrs. Wood, and once, Mrs. Theriault, applied makeup and put up hair. Some of the actors could do their own makeup as well. This ranged from elaborate, colorful makeup for the fairies to simply facial coloring for others. Ms. Geiman provided a staggering variety of costumes, from ancient Greek nobility to Renaissance peasants, and a veritable army of rose-wrapped fairies wearing wire-and-cellophane wings. The wings, which our crew made by hand, took months of weaving wire over molds. The cellophane then had to be ironed on to each individual wing component, with the entire process only complete in time for our opening show.
Our actors came a long way since we first butchered our way through the script in a reading. Backstage, amid crinkling fairy wings that were always in the way, I watched as my fellow thespians emphasized all the right words, and made the story come alive with their faces and gestures. I am so proud of all of them. This year has been the first full year of drama – two productions – since COVID, and hopefully will revive theater at Dalat.
After our final Saturday night performance, emotion struck everyone in force, especially Larissa Lee (12), who loudly protested against impending tears, having finished her last performance at Dalat. But as we came out of the hall, we looked up from the Harbor Stairs to see a full moon, wreathed in clouds. With Ms. Geiman’s incredible skills and the dedication of cast and crew, we and our audience sojourned briefly in a magical wood within the auditorium, but we emerged into a magical world outside as well, surrounded by our cast family. The play may be over, but its friendships remain.
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