The making of A Midsummer Night's Dream

By Ellen Trinklein     10/28/13 7:00pm

Memorizing lines, blocking scenes and taking on the roles of characters are elements of a play that most casual theatergoers are familiar with. The immense time and effort the crew contributes to a production, however, often remains elusive to people not involved in the production themselves.

The Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts' fall 2013 production will be the famous Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Directed by Christina Keefe, director of the Rice Theatre Program, this version of the Shakespeare classic will be performed outdoors and - outside of the crucial elements of acting and direction - will take advantage of a deft production team to create the setting that makes the actors' jobs possible.

Fight Choreography

---

---

Every moment of physical comedy and violence in Dream was choreographed by freelance fight choreographer Leraldo Anzaldua.

Anzaldua said the fight choreography is used to enhance stories between various characters.

"Once [the director, production team and I] decide what story to tell, I find parts of the script where it talks about physical comedy and violence," Anzaldua said. 

Anzaldua said the entire production will be chock-full of physical action, in everything from dynamics between two characters to the movements of the characters themselves.

Dance Choreography

The dances choreographed by Heather Nabors, the assistant director of dance programs at Rice will complement the fight choreography

throughout the play. 

Nabors choreographed the play in a way she said she hopes will stay true to the characters. 

"I try to keep the feeling of a fairy in light, fluttering, mischievous movement," Nabors said. "[I try to use] a lot of hand gestures and things like that."

Set Design

Production manager and set designer Mark Krouskop designed a historically influenced set that combines nature and civilization.

Krouskop, a lecturer in theater design, said he used inspiration from the script and from Elizabethan stages to plan the set.

"I [ended] up reading the script four, five or six times because the only thing you have to base the design off of is the script itself," Krouskop said. "[Then] I took pictures of the Globe Theatre and morphed them."

Krouskop said that in order to move the production outside, the whole set can be broken down into 4-foot-by-8-foot modules that can be

reassembled later.

Dramaturge

An often-overlooked component of plays is the work done by the play's dramaturge. 

Dream dramaturge Grace Weng, a McMurtry College junior, explained her role in the

production.

"I'm the personal Wikipedia of the production," Weng, who is majoring in English and in visual and dramatic arts, said. "At the beginning of the process, I prepared a glossary of older terms and references in the play."

Weng said her role is particularly important in this play because of the director's ambition to make the play more historically accurate.

Costume Design

Just as set design creates the atmosphere in which the characters act, costume design assists in the creation of the characters themselves.

Freelance costume designer Claire Hummel joined VADA for the second time as costume designer for Dream.

"My job is to help the actor and the audience recognize a character and differentiate between characters," Hummel said. "I have to decide how to use [costumes] to make [the] social divisions [between characters] clear."

Although Hummel designed all the costumes herself, she was aided in this production by the work of McMurtry College senior Daniel Burns and Brown College junior Sarah Normoyle. 

Lighting Design

The aesthetics are not complete without a lighting design that complements the play. Rice alumnus Dustin Tannahill (Wiess '12) is Dream's lighting designer, a job he said is not be

taken lightly. 

"The set and costumes depend on the lights because even the best set can look bad in plain light," Tannahill said. "I try to pick colors that will complement the colors used for the set and costumes, and I program cues that will draw the audience's attention to the parts of the stage where the director wants."

Sound Design

No matter how good a play may look, without good sound support, it is impossible for actors to get the play's message across. This is where Andrew Harper, a freelance sound designer hired as sound designer and mixer for Dream, enters the picture. 

"[Keefe] wanted the audience to experience the show from the point of view of Elizabethans," Harper said.

Harper said having the performance outdoors provided an added challenge, and even the ambient sound had to be altered. 

"Indoors, I tend to design ambiance to suggest a setting and time," Harper said. "Those type of ambience effects don't play well outdoors because I'm competing with nature. Rather than fight it by trying to compete, my goal is to complement it by supplementing what is naturally there."

Projection Design

One unexpected and slightly unusual element of this production of Dream is the use of projection to enhance the set.

Projection designer Jake LaViola, a Duncan College senior, said his work involves projecting an image onto a surface. LaViola said that for Dream, he will be transforming the buildings of Rice into the buildings of Elizabethan Athens. 

"I am projecting my image onto a piece that connects Lovett Hall to Sewall Hall, on the arches," LaViola, who is majoring in mechanical engineering and visual and dramatic arts, said. "We are supposed to be in Athens, so I need to project images of Athenian architecture onto ours, mostly for the setting."

To do this, LaViola uses software to manipulate images of Athenian arches and columns on those of Rice itself. 

Composer

In addition to sound design, this semester's VADA production of Dream will feature original compositions by Lovett College sophomore and music composition major Nigel Deane.

Deane said his role includes writing, recording and training instrumentalists to create the music, and training the actors. Deane started as early as July, trying to forget scores that had already been written for Dream and instead create something reflective of how the play made him feel.

"I tried to relinquish any ties to scores that have already been written for any production of Dream," Deane said. "I instead read through the script, watched three different movie interpretations of the play and tried the best I could to allow my own musical style to respond to the content of the play."

Deane said his music will feature simple aesthetics unembellished by electronic additions

to the music.

---