Kenai Central High School’s theater department is taking audience members into the Grecian woods with their production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The show, which opens Friday, is performed in the original old English by students of all grade levels.
To those not familiar with The Bard’s classic comedy, it may seem a little fantastical at first. There’s a quartet of lovers, a theatre troupe staging a show and a meddling kingdom of fairies pulling strings behind the scenes.
Shauna Koch plays Hermia, one of the lovers.
“If I had to describe this play to someone who's never seen it before, I would use the words “fever dream,” because everything that's happening is so random,” she said. “But once you get to the end, it's like, oh, it all makes sense.”
Director and science teacher Travis Lawson says it’s a play that challenges the tragic stereotypes of, say Romeo and Juliet, that many associate with Shakespeare.
“‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ is one of his comedies,” he said. “It's a well known one, and once you see it, especially if you see it multiple times, there's a lot of really funny moments, and that's a big draw for people too. They know the name, and then they watch the show and they understand, like, why he's important.”
Shakespeare can be best appreciated, Lawson says, when his work is performed rather than read. And Shakespeare’s plays being part of the public domain makes the production budget-friendly, too.
Senior Vail Coots plays Oberon, the fairy king. His costume is homemade – a crown of branches and a floor-length green cape decorated to match. Coots said he channeled the characters’ dueling regal and raucous personalities into the design.
“He's not evil, but he has this very, like, mischievous, almost, like, sinister role in the play,” he said. “He's, like, causing trouble, making these people fall in love, and all this. And so I wanted to go a little bit evil and very woodland-y.”
The cast says memorizing Shakespeare’s notoriously dense writing hasn’t been as difficult as you might think. The play rhymes, which they say helps, but old-fashioned repetition also works.
That challenge is especially steep for Noah Pancost. He’s playing Puck – a mischief-making fairy at King Oberon’s beck and call. He joined the cast the week before opening night after his predecessor bowed out. He carried a copy of Sparknotes’ “No Fear Shakespeare” edition of the play and says he’s working hard to memorize his lines in time.
“I’m going to do my best and I’ll give it a go,” he said.
To truly appreciate the production, the actors say audience members should pay attention to the words and the characters’ body language. But Koch, the actress playing Hermia, says appreciation by osmosis is possible, too.
“You're never going to escape it,” she said. “People are always going to talk about it or reference it or say something. And I feel just going and listening to it, even if you don't know what's going on, it's just such a big part of theater history that – it's just good.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” opens at Kenai Central High School on, Nov. 14 and runs through Nov. 23. Catch 7 p.m. performances on Fridays and Saturdays, or matinee performances at 2 p.m. Sundays.
