Shakespeare comes to Strathmore
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
Characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be gracing the stage at Strathmore High School (SHS) later this month. The drama students, under the direction of teacher Paula Richardson, have been working hard to capture the essence of the play.
“It is about lovers, mistaken love, or misplaced love. It is a comedy,” said Richardson.
“It’s fun characters and it’s all about falling in love and being true to your feelings.”
The play follows three different interlocking plots. It outlines the events leading up to the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. It also includes the tales of the Fairy King and Queen, and of a young couple who decide to run away to a neighbouring county to get married after the girl’s father has stated he doesn’t approve of the match.
“It’s a very well known Shakespearian play and it’s probably one of his lighter ones, and his (more fun) ones, and that was one of the reasons I chose it,” said Richardson.
“I thought once the students actually got into the story line they would actually be able to identify a little bit with these characters because they are closer to their age, the young lovers are closer to the students age.”
This is the first time Richardson has directed the play at SHS, but says it has been preformed there in the past.
“I would say that it’s actually going relatively well. Students are working very hard at memorizing difficult dialogue,” said Richardson.
“They’re very excited about their costumes because their costumes are professional costumes that we’ve rented.”
She said she thinks the students may have been apprehensive at first because it is Shakespeare, but after a few weeks of rehearsing they seem to have gotten past the mindset that they can’t do it.
“This was actually the students choice. I gave them the choice at the beginning of the school year, I showed them three different plays and they voted on which one it wanted to do. It was pretty much unanimous that they wanted to try Shakespeare,” said Richardson.
“Our art students and the art teacher, Mrs. Stevens, built our main set pieces. The art teacher built that into her curriculum so that students could help me and they still get credit for it. That’s been really nice having the art students help us.”
Opening night is on Nov. 27 and the play runs until the 29th. Tickets are $10 and people can either buy them at the door or by calling the school at 403-934-3135.