To look with the eyes and the mind: A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to UW

Under the influence of a spell, a young lover croons to a woman he met moments ago, all feelings for his partner Hermia forgotten. “Not Hermia but Helena I love,” ”Who will not change a raven for a dove?”

Thus begins the messy but fun love dodecahedron in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This November, the UW theatre and performance department’s annual production will be an adaptation of the timeless play, directed by Tim Welham.

In this queer re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s early comedies, the play kicks off with Athenian lovers Lysandra and Hermia. Hermia’s mother Egea, who disapproves of the match, orders Hermia to marry Demetrius, a man of Egea’s choosing. The lovers flee to the forest in defiance of Egea and the oppressive rules she represents, undergoing a wild series of events, encountering fairies and becoming entangled in shenanigans before reaching their happy ending.

“It’s one of the first plays I’ve ever done and one of my favourites,” Welham said in an interview with Imprint. The production will be the sixth rendition of the comedy that Welham has been involved with in his career, and his first time working on a show with UW’s theatre department. Welham states that the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream centers around “love, imagination, forgiveness, acceptance, and [the act of] maturing. All the characters… go through transition and transformation throughout the play.”

The director is setting this adaptation in modern times, with a greater focus on the lovers’ storyline and a new vision for the characters. “Because the story is about fighting against the patriarchy, a queer story [of queer love and queer joy], lends itself to that story. And I think queer stories really need to be celebrated right now; difference needs to be celebrated.” Hermia’s lover Lysander and her father Egeus from the original A Midsummer Night’s Dream are re-imagined as Lysandra and Egea here, and forest fairy Puck is portrayed as a woman by a female actress, adding complexity and a refreshing update to the centuries-old work.

“It’s a play that I love because it’s lighter [and] it’s joyous,” Welham shared. “Its a great piece to work on with… an undergraduate [theatre] company, because the life events [from the play] are closer to their age and their experience levels.” Prior to this show, Welham taught Shakespeare Voice and Text courses at St. Jerome’s and other universities like Western University and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Aside from teaching, Welham also works as a text coach for the Stratford Festival. Just like athletic coaches help a sports team stay in shape for peak performance, text coaches at Stratford Festival help actors develop and maintain their mastery of Shakespeare’s text. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Welham does similar work with UW performers: “identifying intention, breaking down the meaning of the language, [and] looking at the rhythms … because it’s as much about speaking the text as it is thinking your way through it.”

Linguistically, Welham says, the text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has a more regular structure and is easier to digest than Shakespeare’s later plays. Welham identifies four different language structures, or language “worlds,” in the play: one for the Athenian nobles in unrhymed iambic pentameter, one for the play’s lovers seen in rhyming verse, a third used by the Athenian commoners who put on the play-within-a-play for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding, and a fourth used by the fairy characters in the forest. Characters in the last category speak in trochaic tetrameter, akin to the reverse of iambic pentameter. As the play progresses, these four language structures interact and change to reflect the evolution of the characters — for instance, the lovers’ speech shifts from an almost musical rhyming structure into blank verse by the end of the play. “We hear them grow up in the language of the text itself,” Welham added.

To attain that maturity, though, the pairs of lovers must go through a tangle of misadventures and transformations (quite literally in some cases). Third-year theatre and performance student Daniela Milicevic plays Puck, the mischievous fairy who, in the original, accidentally doses Hermia’s lover Lysander (female in the UW adaptation) with enchanted eye drops commissioned by fairy king Oberon for his wife, Titania. The switch-up results in Lysander falling in love with Helena, Demetrius’s lover.

“There’s moments where… [Puck’s] actions change the trajectory of some of the moments between the lovers,” Milicevic says, specifically citing the moment Puck transforms the head of Athenian commoner Nick Bottom into that of a donkey, which ends up further complicating and changing the dynamics among the other characters. Milicevic describes Puck as “not directly involved with [the other characters], but … indirectly leading the play somewhere.” Milicevic also notes that while Puck was traditionally played by a male actor, his role in the show is not defined strictly by his gender: “There’s so many branches to this play, and [Puck] is just one branch of it.”

While Milicevic is an agent of chaos on-stage, she also works off-stage on the carpentry crew to make sure the show goes off without a hitch. This includes learning production techniques before planning and building props from scratch. “Most of us don’t have building experience,” Milicevic points out. “We have to be students, but also have to produce something that needs to get walked on and needs to handle another month of rehearsals and shows.”

Fourth-year theatre and performance student Quinn Hetherington faces the same challenge as a tech crew member. Hetherington works both as a dramaturg and as a wardrobe tech keeping the show’s costumes in good condition.

“It’s a big struggle to try and keep everything neat and clean so that everyone gets that same show experience … [and] see the costumes as they were when we [first] put them out,” Hetherington said. 

At the time of this interview, Hetherington was hard at work on the corset worn by fairy queen Titania. The wardrobe team did not use a pre-made pattern but created one from scratch for Titania’s outfit, before working with actress Morgaine McEvoy to ensure the corset would fit. Rather than fabric, though, Hetherington is using foam, which presents its own challenges: “To make it a real corset with the grommets and tying up at the back, we need to give it some strength … do we add fabric in it? How do we make this foam not rip when we are tying [the corset] up? It’s a long process.” Hetherington cites that special coatings and material treatments are planned for the corset, so that Titania’s actor Morgaine McEvoy can move comfortably and look stunning doing so on stage.

“The great thing about Waterloo’s theatre and performance program is that all the students are exposed to all aspects of making theatre, so they understand how difficult it is to work on a production backstage,” Welham said of his experience working with UW students. Students who major in theatre and performance are required to complete technical production courses in addition to acting courses, creating well-rounded graduates who, as Welham says, know “how much work is put in and how each piece of the puzzle fits together,” regardless of their future theatre career goals.

After months of hard work, the cast and crew hope that audiences will not only enjoy the play but be inspired to connect with others.

Hetherington and Milicevic encourage UW students with even a middling interest in theatre to get involved. Both have heard many express intimidation towards working in the performing arts, especially with regards to Shakespearean works, given the antiquated language and complex interpretations.

Milicevic believes that “Shakespeare doesn’t have to be boring [or] black-and-white.” While many university students know Shakespeare in the stuffy context of an English classroom, she hopes that seeing the beloved playwright’s work in action on stage will change the audience’s perception of Shakespeare’s target audience and what they think Shakespeare on stage looks like: “If we find new audiences, I hope they… take away that we are young people performing Shakespeare… and having a great time doing it.”

“If you are a human being… if you are alive and desire to do theater, you can do theater,” Hetherington stressed. As a student with a chronic illness, she understands that those with physical limitations and accessibility needs may not feel up to the task, but Hetherington emphasizes that anyone can find their place in theatre, citing the incredible support she received from the faculty and fellow students. “The UW theatre program is so small, but we are so mighty… If you are debating on [taking a theatre class] and think, ‘Oh no, I’m not good at theatre’… there’s no such thing as not being good enough for theatre.”

In the end, Welham hopes that the play helps inspire non-violent change and continued connection in a time of increasing isolation and divisive rhetoric: “There are a couple moments where there’s almost violence in the play, but it doesn’t quite happen … this play stays a comedy because violence does not prevail.” Welham also reiterates a sentiment expressed by many performers: “All theatre is political. …The [simple] act… of standing on a stage, speaking your truth and standing up for what you believe in, of showing queer love represented on stage… allows the audience and us creators to imagine a better future.” He hopes that the audience walks away from the stage with “a feeling of inclusivity… love, [and] generosity of spirit.”

And just like queer love, art itself is a rule-breaker, game-changer, and world-maker. Even with AI threatening to replace creators and their work, Welham has faith: “The theatre will endure because it represents the best of our humanity.”