Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Chattanooga Theatre Centre stages "A Midsummer Night's Disco".
Shakespeare’s classic gets caught up in disco fever at Theatre Centre
What happens when you set a classic Shakespearean work to music of Donna Summer?
“A Midsummer Night’s Disco,” opening Friday, June 2, in the Circle Theatre of the Chattanooga Theatre Centre.
From the creative mind of Scott Dunlap, comes a re- imagined tale of misplaced love under disco lights on boogie nights. This marks the third Shakespearean work he has flipped to present in a way that might never have been considered. For this play, the audience will feel like they are attending a party, he says, whose theme just happens to be “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Scott took the Shakespeare tale and distilled it down. He has started this tradition of taking plays and presenting them in ways people haven’t seen before,” says Beth Gumnick, who is co-directing the play with Dunlap.
“Disco music is used in keeping with a theme at particular moments in the play. Scott has put together a play list that’s fun and includes songs people will recognize and want to dance along to. We really want the audience to feel involved; there are opportunities for them to dance and enjoy the party,” she says.
The Shakespeare comedy portrays events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens to Hip- polyta, involving four young lovers and a group of six mechanicals who are controlled by fairies.
Only instead of the forest Shakespeare envisioned as a setting, the action here will take place in a disco. Costuming will be the 1970s’ fashions — think polyester leisure suits with oversized pointed shirt collars, mini dresses and platform shoes.
Playing the lovers are Regis Beard, Chelsea Branch, Jordan Dickenson and Preston Prigmore. Cast as fairies are Nneka Ebbe, Christian Smith, Joanna Lewis, Jeremey Campbell and Blake Storey.
The rude mechanicals are Maria Chattin, Katie Clem, Grace Denton, Lauren Rayhab, Angelia Stinnet and Teralyn Wade.
Gumnick says having two directors has balanced feminine and masculine points of view.
“In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Oberon and Titania have male-female perspectives on how to approach fighting in a relationship or falling in love at first sight, so having both of us work on this together has been nice to get that perspective,” she says.
“We enjoy each other’s company, we are good friends, we enjoy each other’s taste and aesthetics so we like working together and playing off each other as directors,” she explains.
Dunlap says the goal of all his Shakespeare mash-ups has always been to show The Bard isn’t stuffy or boring.
“I always try to show theater can be fun. A lot of times when we hear the name Shakespeare, we think about what we read in highschool English class and it really didn’t come to life. Having it be fun makes it more relatable.
“Theater has to change and the way we present theater has to change. We have to keep people excited about these stories — they are important and have something to say. If ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was boring, it wouldn’t still be around.”