A Midsummer Night's Dream Reflections

Going to see Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, I was excited. Over spring break, I had indulged in a little chick-lit reading of Sophie Kinsella's Mini-Shopaholic, the latest in her Confessions of a Shopaholic series. The main character, Becky, throws her husband a party based off of the play with an elaborate setting described as a wonderful, magical forest and one of Shakespeare's best creations. The description drew me in, and excited me to see it live.

We sat down in the theater and were transported into that same magical forest, this time on a wraparound stage instead of in a castle, like the book. The trees were a screen backdrop that would change by the scene, but still created an aura of mystery. For two hours, I was enchanted by crazy characters and twisting plotlines; not all of which I understood due to an iffy ability to comprehend the old-English language on the spot, but I felt I was able to get the gist of it. The actors were fantastic and I overall found it easier to follow than Macbeth, and much more entertaining. However, my classmates and I seemed to collectively be distracted by one thing: Puck’s gender.

When the lights went up to begin intermission, the first I did was ask Alex, who is much better at Shakespeare than I am, about it, thinking that maybe I had just missed something. The actor seemed to have both male and female ‘parts’ as well as both masculine and feminine characteristics. We were prepared for this phenomenon, due to our reading of Orlando, but were curious nonetheless. None of us had read or seen the play before, and didn’t have any context if Puck should’ve been a boy or a girl.

After some post-show iPhone-googling, it was determined that Shakespeare had intended for Puck to be a boy, leading us to assume that the actor was a women playing a man, or a male fairy. It was an interesting take on the original work of Shakespeare, where girls weren’t even allowed to be in the plays. Female roles would be played by males dressing up like girls, having a women in a play playing a male character would’ve been unheard of!

Our fascination with the sex and gender roles in the play was not surprising, given the current media frenzy surrounding birth control, reproductive rights and the Miss Universe scandal concerning Jenna Talackova. As we as humans evolve, we’re changing how we want to act and trying to break down as many barriers as we can – class, race, sexual orientation and now gender barriers. Our distraction by Puck is just an example of the traditional roles we’re used to, and how change and progress in this area will be slow to come. Maybe we’re just maturing teenagers, but Academy students tend to be fairly open in our beliefs and being shocked by the cross-dressing was not an open response.

The students did get over the issue quickly, instead focusing on how dedicated that woman was to her role – she clearly shaved her head to play the part. From a girl’s perspective, that takes guts. She played a fabulous fairy in her mischievous ways of confusing both the audience and the characters in the forest and for that, she gets a thumbs up from me.