-Theseus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, V,1
With eleven- and twelve-year-olds, I got to cast them into their very first play by the Bard, as for more than a decade I got to produce A Midsummer Night's Dream twice a year with the entire 7th grade class. Just after they began to read the play in English, as final project in their Drama class with me, we put the play on its feet and into their voices and bodies. I'd developed a way to give each of the ±16 actors in each section either a leading role or two juicy supporting roles, so everyone had fun.
The first day of the project I'd see fear and confusion on many faces. What weird language! What a lot of words! But by the end of the first week, they'd be laughing and pumped up with each her own part or parts and a wonderful story to tell. To be witness to child after child falling in love with Shakespeare at such a young age has been one of the greatest experiences of my teaching career. I'd work with our marvelous Dance teacher to create a lively original production inspired on a theme or time period chosen by the class. They were invested! And often, after the big, public performance, I'd have teary, wide-eyed parents approach me, surprised and thrilled that their seventh grader had been persuaded not only to perform, but to perform Shakespeare with pizzazz!
Many years, in choosing a Fall Play for the high school, I couldn't and didn't resist the temptation to pick Much Ado About Nothing or As You Like It or Midsummer or (my favorite) Twelfth Night. And something wonderful always happens, for Shakespeare's wit and wisdom bring out those same qualities in all involved -- the actors, the stage manager, the costumer, and my darling husband, as well.
Alva has written music for a number of the songs in my Shakespeare productions.
Here's "Come Away, Death" from Twelfth Night II,4
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown.
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.