For this year’s spring play, the theater department put on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” running the show from Monday, April 6 through Thursday, April 9.
It’s a tradition that every four years, the theater department performs a Shakespeare play as the spring main-stage play. Senior Izzy Simms, who played Helena, thinks performing Shakespeare helps stretch the actors.
“This one is so much harder and so much longer [than other spring plays] because it’s a five act [play] that we formed into two different acts,” Simms said. “So altogether, this show is three hours long, and it’s really rigorous for a lot of the characters.”
The play’s antiquated language presented another challenge for sophomore Ainsly Leithead, who played Hermia, when producing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“The language is definitely hard to learn and it kind of left no room for error,” Leithead said. “If you forget a line or mess up you can’t really make new things up, because it’s so hard to keep speaking the Shakespeare language.”
Sophomore Zoe Merriman read the play in her English class this year, helping her better understand her role as Starveling.
“I thought I was gonna struggle more than I did, but it was okay because I read the book in English,” Merriman said. “We were able to talk through it, so we understood it more deeply than if you were just doing it as a freshman, and you didn’t know it.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has different storylines and groups of characters that rarely intersect until the end of the play. This closeness helped Simms grow her onstage chemistry with those in her group.
“It was just so fun, because a lot of the times our calendars were broken up into groups,” Simms said. “We didn’t all have to be at a rehearsal for something we weren’t in because the fairies are in one scene, romantics are in one scene, royals are in one scene, and they’re not often crossed.”
Leithead enjoyed creating connections within her group as well.
“[I liked] developing my character and finding chemistry with people,” Leithead said. “The girl who plays Helena in my cast [and I] have a really great relationship, and I feel like you can see that in the play.”
However, Merriman’s group, the comedians, appeared throughout the play and interacted with the different storylines.
“Since I was a part of the comedians, we were in everything,” Merriman said. “I got to experience every scene while acting. That was fun, and I really liked the forest set.”
This was Simms’ final bow in a mainstage production at the school.
“I’ve done every single main stage [play] since my freshman year with “Guys and Dolls”, and it’s really hard to think that I only have one show left, and I never get to perform another show in the PAC,” Simms said. “I don’t think it’s hit me entirely. I think it will hit me after we close [“Band Geeks”] and the choir concert, because then I truly never get to go back there.”
