"A Midsummer's Night Dream" Play Essay

Midsummer's Night Dream

Acting:

Were the actors believable in their roles?

I did not find all of the actors particularly believable in their roles. I could not help noticing that several of the members of the cast forgot their lines or misspoke their lines, sometimes saying a line in the wrong place. Knowing the play well, this really threw me off and took me out of the moment of the performance. I felt there was a lot of timing issues with the performers at well where they would not hit their mark or missed their cue.

Identify the performers you considered most successful.

Of all the performers in the play, I felt that the actress playing the role of Hermia excelled in her role. She made the love and despondency and anger very palpable which was conveyed easily to the audience.

If there were performers you did not like, identify them and explain why you did not like them.

The least successful performer in the play, in my opinion, was the actor portraying Lysander. Out of all the actors, he forgot his lines the most and most obviously. Given that this is one of the main roles of the performance, the actor should have prepared himself better.

4. Discuss how the performers related or failed to relate to one another. Did they listen to each other and respond?

The issue of timing and misreading lines comes up with regard to this question. When one of the actors messed up a line or forgot it, the other actors were visibly thrown off. Not knowing how to improvise, some just went forward with their dialogue which no longer made sense in the context of the conversation with the other actor. They seemed to acting at one another or against one another instead of as an ensemble working together.

Directing:

1. The director unifies a production and frequently provides an interpretation of the text. Did there seem to be a unifying idea behind the production? If so, how would you express it?

I found the directing of the play to be decent.It was acceptable, but not extraordinary. In works of Shakespeare, they have been performed so often and in so many ways that is fairly begs to have a definite directorial interpretation. Here it seemed as through the director was not inspired by the play but was merely putting on a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. I feel this lackadaisical nonchalant attitude is reflected in the errors made by the actors.

Costumes:

1. What information was conveyed by the costumes about time, place, characters, and situation?

The costumes showed that the characters were either Athenian or they were the forest fairy people. There was a clear delineation between what is warn in the city and what the natural beings of the forest put on.

2. What was the period of the costumes?

The costumes were togas from the period of the Ancient Greeks, except for the fairies which aren't really of any era in particular.

3. What was the style?

The style of the costumes was simplistic; they did not look very professionally made. Given that this was a low-budget production, this was understandable. The costume designer seemed to do the best with the limited resources that they had, but it was clear that the resources were limited.

4. How were color and texture used to give you clues to the personalities of the characters?

The color pallets which were worn by the various characters did help to reflect some of the personality of the character, at least in differing fairy folk from Athenian. The fairies were bathed in more natural colors like greens and browns while the Athenians do not have these colors.

5. Did each character's costume or costumes seem appropriate for his or her personality, social status, occupation, etc.

There was a degree to which the costumer tried to make the outfit fit the person, but I was unconvinced with regard to certain characters. Bottom and the other actors are meant to be on a lower social level, so they should have been more nattily attired. The rest seemed to….....