|
An award-winning director and an award-winning designer are helping to create a slightly mad but magical evening for Theatre South Carolina’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Shakespearean comedy will run at Drayton Hall Theater April 15–24.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the first Columbia production for director Karla Koskinen, a new faculty member in theatre. Koskinen has held academic appointments at DePaul University, Western Michigan University, and Barat College. Her recent production of Mornings at Seven for Phoenix Theatre won an Outstanding Overall Production ariZoni Award for the 2003–04 season; she was nominated for an ariZoni Award for Outstanding Direction for the same production. Koskinen also spent 12 years as artistic director for Shakespeare on the Green, a professional summer Shakespeare festival in Chicago.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, four young lovers flee the city of Athens in search of freedom and happiness in nearby woods. They discover a place of enchantment inhabited by mischievous fairies who soon make hash of their love affairs. Only at daybreak are the lovers reunited with their true loves, and only then is order restored.
“Shakespeare’s greatest comedy freely mixes together the passion, poetry, and lunacy of love,” Koskinen said. “Our production has to match the intensity of the play’s vision.”
One way to achieve that intensity, she believes, is to focus on the magical transformations in the play.
“The biggest transformation, you might say, is we move from a place where marriage is ruled by men to one where mutual attraction and love, even crazy and magical love, take over,” Koskinen said. “Love and freedom rule, which is great, but the downside is a certain madness and irrationality."
Sets and costumes for the production are being designed by MFA-candidate Kimi Maeda, who recently received the Rose Brand award for Scene Design (see sidebar at right). Maeda has just returned from an internship in Japan to collaborate on projects with director and designer Shusaku Futamura. At USC, she has designed sets for The Trojan Women, The Crucible, and Othello, and she created costumes for Polaroid Stories.
Guest lighting designer for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Debra Dumas, a professional who works on and off-Broadway in opera, dance, and video. She has worked for such diverse events as fundraisers featuring Bette Midler and Harry Belafonte, The Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express on Broadway, The Barber of Seville for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and Julie Taymor’s Juan Darien.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at Drayton Hall Theater April 15 through April 24, Tuesday through Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm.
Tickets are $14 for the general public; $12 USC faculty and staff, military and senior citizens (60 and over); and $10 for students.
To purchase tickets, call the box office at 7-2551.
3/05
|
