Broadway Players of FHS to perform ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

FAIRFIELD - The Broadway Players of Fairfield High School will perform William Shakespeare's comedy 'A Midsummer Night's Dream” this weekend, Nov. 1-3.

The first two performances, Nov. 1-2, will be at night, starting at 7:30 p.m. The Sunday matinee on Nov. 3 will be at 2 p.m. All performances will be in the FHS Auditorium, there is a fee to attend. The box office will open 45 minutes before the show.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is about three groups of people who by happenstance converge in a forest near Athens with mixed-up, magical results: a duke and his fiancee, quarreling fairies, workmen who are rehearsing a play, and fleeing lovers - one eloping couple, one man pursuing them, and a woman pursuing him.

The play is directed by Betsie Wotherspoon, a special education instructor at FHS who also has been a thespian coach for many years. The original play is set in Athens, Greece, but Wotherspoon made one small tweak and set it in Athens, Georgia, instead.

Wotherspoon said the interesting thing about this play is that there is no clear lead. Stage time is nearly equally divided among the different groups that share the stage.

'There are the fairies, the mechanicals [workmen] trying to rehearse a play, and then there are the lovers,” Wotherspoon said.

Twenty students are acting in the production, joined by about 10 crew members such as stage manager Ella Phillips, who Wotherspoon describes as her 'right-hand woman.”

Students built the set, which they had to keep simple and compact in order to transport, because the Broadway Players are taking this production on the road. They have been invited to perform an abridged 45-minute version of the play at the Iowa Thespian Festival Nov. 8 at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

The version the Broadway Players will perform in Fairfield is closer to 90 minutes, which is itself a shortened version of the full play, which Wotherspoon said runs about 2.5 hours. Shakespeare wrote the play in the 1590s. English vocabulary and usage has changed much in the ensuing 400 years, so much so that Shakespeare's plays are sometimes 'translated” into Modern English to make them easier to understand. But the Broadway Players are using the original lines in all their ancient glory.

That doesn't bother Harper Fiske, who plays the role of Puck, an 'impish, mischievous” fairy who plays with magic like a naughty child. Fiske said the decision to use the old English lines made them easier to learn. Shakespeare was very careful in how he crafted his sentences, imbuing them with both a superficial meaning and a deeper one hidden underneath. Fiske added that they're also easy to remember because they all rhyme.

The only time during the production where a character departs from the original English is when Fiske starts the second half of the show with a Modern English recap of the events that transpired in the first half.

Fiske is perhaps better acquainted with this play than any other student, having performed a portion of it last school year for individual speech competition. For that, she played both the role of Helena and the man, Demetrius, who broke up with Helena to be with another lover, Hermia.

This will be the second Shakespearean play Fiske has performed in, the first was acting as a maid in 'Much Ado About Nothing.”

'I'm a senior, and I'm sad that this will my last high school play,” Fiske said. 'But I couldn't have asked for a better show to end on. I'm excited for people to see it.”

Sophomore Sophia Fritz plays the role of Titania, the queen of the fairies. Titania is married to Oberon, king of the fairies (played by Colton Crowl), but the two are estranged because Titania is raising a fairy child she adopted when one of her friend's died. Oberon wants to groom the child to become his henchman, but Titania refuses. As a punishment for her disobedience, Oberon casts a spell on Titania to make her fall in love with the first thing she sees, who happens to be a character named Nick Bottom (played by Carson Taylor), whose head Puck transformed into that of a donkey.

This will be Fritz's second high school play, the first being last year's 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Though she's an introvert, Fritz said she feels comfortable on stage. It helps that she has a loud speaking voice.

'That definitely comes in handy,” she laughed.

Fritz enjoys singing, but she won't sing in this production. She will perform a dance, though.

'I danced when I was little kid, but I only did it because of my sister Julia,” said Sophia, referring to her older sister who graduated from FHS earlier this year.

Cast list

Apart from those already mentioned, cast members include Ethan McReynolds and Charity Trent as the duke (Theseus) and duchess (Hippolyta) of Athens. Mira Pappin is Hermia and Dallas Carlson as her lover, Lysander. Jacob Carlson plays Demetrius, another man who wants to marry Hermia, and Alyson Reid, is Helena, the woman suffering from unrequited love for Demetrius. Crowl, in addition to playing Oberon, also portrays Egeus, Hermia's father.

Titania's attendant fairies are Arwydd Hays as Peaseblossom, Kaylee Pringle as Dewspinner, Felicia Strong as Mustard seed, Charity Trent as Moonshadow, Nicole Sutherland as Echo, and Jasmine Wyatt as Zephyr. The Mechanicals are Spencer Hilger as Peter Quince the carpenter and the director of their play, Carson Taylor as Nick Bottom the weaver who is magically given the head of a donkey, J.J. Funkhouser as Francis Flute the bellows mender, Izzy Ferrell as Tom Snout the tinker, Gerda Fiske as Robin Starveling the tailor, and Samara McLain as Snug the joiner.

Joining Ella Phillips backstage are Jay Coplea, Abigail Ford, Blair Grunwald, Katie McLain, Nora Salek, Gannon Scott, Nathan Trower, and Ana Carminato, who perform various functions such as serving on light, sound, props, set, costume, and/or backstage run crews.

Adult volunteers include John Grunwald and Jim Edgeton as tech Supervisors. Fred Hucke created the instrumentation for the fairies' song and rehearsed with the fairies. Noel Wotherspoon assisted with costumes and set, and Betsie Wotherspoon is the director.