WHY THIS PLAY NOW?
by Arushi Grover
As Taylor Swift speaks in the bridge of her song, “epiphany”:
Only 20 minutes to sleep
But you dream of some epiphany
Just one single glimpse of relief
To make some sense of what you’ve seen
We embark on the journey of bringing this production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life in a precipitous moment in time; at the time of writing, there persists doubts as American society begins to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but regardless, we are creating theatre in a moment where society is beginning to reflect on the experience of what the pandemic has meant, what it was and is. We have experienced a unique and incredible—as in, impossible to believe—experience in the past year-and-a-half. As we begin to exit the pandemic, we are left to return to “normal” life with hazy conceptions of what has transpired. For some, life resumes, 1.5 years later. For many, there exists loss, in time, experience, people. For some, the experience of transitions during the pandemic—graduating school, moving homes, switching jobs—means that one is not resuming life, but entering a world unlike one has seen before, and without a grace period of change and adjustment.
The experience of the pandemic has been unique, incredible—even wondrous in seeing the breakdown of one’s individual reality. We exit this experience like exiting a dream, just as the lovers of Dream do, questioning what happened and conferring with each other:
DEMETRIUS
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.
HERMIA
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When everything seems double.
HELENA
So methinks.
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,
Mine own and not mine own.
DEMETRIUS
Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. (4.1.194-203)
We all have experienced the chaos of the woods in our own lives, where time elides the passing of days into an eternal night. The breakdown of social order, the threats to personal reality, and aching desire may all ring as familiar.
For us, as theatre artists, Dream also makes a stunning return to in-person (hopefully!) theatre, as Shakespeare’s true “love letter to the theatre.” As the “dream” in question transfers in meaning from the lovers’ to the theatre’s, in the course of the play, Puck leaves our audience with a way out of the madness:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear (5.3.440-443).
Ruminating on the nature of theatre itself, how it works in exchange between the audience and actor, Dream asks us to consider the role of imagination in creating the fabric of theatre, woven of a mutual agreement between all its players to dream that such visions are real. In this stunning moment of returning to live theatre, let’s invest in the specialness of such a dream, the magical, shared experience of creating this live, in-person, in-close-distance art. And after all, some dreams are necessary, a need to dissociate when the hard times get harder…
The verses of Swift’s song ruminates on the mental trauma of the frontline workers, especially the doctors and health practitioners, of the COVID-19 pandemic: “Holds your hand through plastic now / ‘Doc, I think she’s crashing out’ / And some things you just can’t speak about” For us, this is a moment to ruminate on what we’ve just seen, to rejoice in coming together once again, and to deliberate on the careful relationship between reality and imagination that theatre entails. Let this be an “epiphany”, the “sense of relief [that makes] some sense of what you’ve seen”—and keep a watchful gaze on those dreams that haunt and taunt.
To my fellow artists on the production team and in the cast who will be navigating the journey of this production, I highly encourage giving Swift’s “epiphany”—the ambient, atmospheric, and cinematic, “epiphany”—a listen, eyes closed and breathing deep.
