Junior Sophia Wheeler (left) and freshman Zach Carvajal (right) perform a scene during a dress rehearsal for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” on May 18. Though the comedy is mainly written in Shakespearean English, the cast has added multiple ad-libs to modernize the play. “There were a lot of questions that first week,” head director Chesley Thornburg said. “How do I perform Shakespeare? What am I even saying? What is the plot? And it’s comedy, too, so the biggest question was: how do I make this funny?”
Junior Sophia Wheeler (left) and freshman Zach Carvajal (right) perform a scene during a dress rehearsal for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” on May 18. Though the comedy is mainly written in Shakespearean English, the cast has added multiple ad-libs to modernize the play. “There were a lot of questions that first week,” head director Chesley Thornburg said. “How do I perform Shakespeare? What am I even saying? What is the plot? And it’s comedy, too, so the biggest question was: how do I make this funny?”

Theater to perform “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” May 20 and 21

Krista Fleming, Managing Editor

May 19, 2023

The theater department will perform its last show of the school year, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in the cafeteria at 2 and 7 p.m. on May 20 and 7 p.m. May 21. The original end of the year show was supposed to be “The Addams Family,” but was changed due to complications with theater staffing in early March.

“I chose ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ because I needed something that I knew like the back of my hand,” head director Chelsey Thornburg said. “It’s a script that I know very well, and when we’re putting something together last minute, we need that.”

Sophomore Diego Sierra performs a scene during a dress rehearsal for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” on May 18. The first week of rehearsal was spent away from the stage, where actors went over lines in small groups to understand what Shakespeare meant.

The first Shakespeare performance for the company in three years, the comedy mainly takes place in a magical fairy-infested forest and follows four humans in a love square getting caught in the crossfire of a squabble between the king and queen of the fairies while a rehearsal goes on in the same woods. Compared to recent productions, this show will have more student-made designs regarding the set, costumes and makeup. 

“It was really fun making everyone look like they were from a fantasy world,” sophomore makeup designer Christian Soriano said. “There weren’t any restrictions to it because nothing had to look real. It was just taking an aesthetic I assigned to each character and researching color pallets, then I had this really cool looking design.”

The theater company has done 11 shows in its 2022-2023 season. Rehearsals for this show began March 23.

“Keeping the energy up has been pretty challenging,” junior Max Turman, who plays Demetrius, said. “It’s the end of the year and we have rehearsal until 6 [p.m.] with AP tests and finals on top of that. Especially with these lines that you have to really work at dissecting, it can be difficult, but we still get it done.”

This will be the last show seniors have a chance to be a part of, but there are only four seniors in the cast and crew. Among them, Juliana Bruno is one of the four lovers and plans to pursue a theater major in college. This is Bruno’s first time being a lead since she played Angelina in “Paganini” her freshman year. 

Junior Hana Robson (left), junior Max Turnman, sophomore Shane Duggan and junior Arzelle Roque perform a scene during a dress rehearsal for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” on May 18. Head director Chelsey Thornburg said this show was chosen due to the new seasons many seniors received with at least one Shakespeare show. “It is so important for actors and technicians to have Shakespeare training,” Thornburg said. “It’s really important that I, as a high school educator, am teaching my actors and technicians how to read and analyze a script by Shakespeare.”

“It’s been hard the past few years to figure out how I feel about myself and my worth as an actor,” Bruno said. “I’ve been struggling to know if I still enjoy this, and seeing that cast list — being in this show — it’s reminding me that I do. I do still care about this and this still makes me happy.”

Thornburg said participating in a Shakespeare show is a necessity for high school actors and technicians preparing for college. With two teachers in the theater department having left  halfway through this year, which complicated producing shows, Thornburg said her main goal was to make theater fun again for those moving on.

“It’s the end of the year and, in a weird way, the seniors are passing the torch down to the juniors with this show,” Thornburg said. “The seniors have helped with [the] set [and] other after school things, but they’re moving on [now].”

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