Shakespeare in love themes
Only 1.7 percent of applicants are admitted. The U-M program is highly competitive and selective. The cast for this production is a mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors. Standing: Zachary Mitchell (Egeus). Photos by Vincent J. Left to right on the floor: Hoke Faser (Demetrius), Maggie Kuntz (Helene), Helen Shen (Hermia), Caleb Quezon (Lysander). They get to do straight plays and Shakespeare festivals, so even though it’s the musical theater department, they are well prepared for the diversity of the business.” “In their four years, they experience a Shakespeare play, a contemporary play, a docudrama so that in the arc of their experience they can try on the different styles,” he said. “These kids are in dance classes at 8 am and rehearse until 10 pm, so I tend to be really good about only calling in the people I need and not having them all in at one time,” he said.Ĭardinal is a professor of musical theater performance but each year the music theater department performs a non-musical production. He rehearses the large cast in small groups to work around the busy schedules of his actors. Later he will work with the Rude Mechanicals. The evening we met for the interview, Cardinal was beginning the evening's rehearsal by working with a group of actors on the choreography of a scene where the fairy Puck has Lysander and Demetrious running in circles to prevent a fight. “We know it’s fractured because Shakespeare used the components of it to do shows in court, so you could hire the company to do just the lovers’ story, or you could hire the company just to do the funny play within the play,” Cardinal said. The lovers and the fairies in verse, but in different forms and rhythms and the working class actors speak in prose. The amateur Rude Mechanicals rehearse and self-censor and rewrite the “tragic comedy” love story of Pyramus and Thisby. Another love story concerns the fairy king Oberon and his jealousy concerning his queen, Titania. The story of the star-crossed lovers is one love story. How do they work this out? Theseus sees himself as this rude sort of sexual being much like a donkey, or is he a teenage boy who’s a rebel and cool or the follower of rules? Hippolyta sees herself as the gawkie teenager who essentially beats up the boys as she is an Amazon, or is she the pretty, pretty princess? So, for me, I’m filtering the whole thing through this dream which unites all the pieces as opposed to making it a very fractured tale.” “The story is, of course, they fall in love on the battlefield combating against each other, and respect and love grow out of their mutual admiration in combat, which is very strange. “I like to think of the play as Theseus and Hippolyta’s dream, how they’re working out this match,” said Cardinal. A band of fairies will scramble and unscramble these lovers because as Lysander notes, “the course of true love never did run smooth." The daughter Hermia loves Lysander not Demetrius, her father’s choice, who has forsaken his former love, Helena. But Theseus must deal with a complaint from an angry father that his daughter is defying his wishes and the law and has declared her love for someone else. Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons, are preparing for their wedding. “So it’s examining issues that are core to what it is to be a human being.”
“Why I think it’s popular is that at its core it’s about love and about our impulses to find love and to find people to love and how complicated that is and how it works in the larger structure of our society as well as our personal lives,” Cardinal said.
2-5 in the Arthur Miller Theater, directed by Vincent Cardinal. The University of Michigan Department of Musical Theatre will present a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Dec. There’s 16th-century style rom-com, fairies with magic spells and love potions, and a hilarious troupe of amateur thespians who are preparing a show for a royal wedding. It has a little bit of everything for everybody. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the Bard’s most popular comedies and one of the most accessible for modern audiences. Helen Shen (Hermia) and Caleb Quezon (Lysander) star in U-M's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo by Vincent J.