Studying Theatre Together: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In this course, theatre students will work together with elderly people on Shakespeare’s famous comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600). In the first part of the course (meetings 1-5) we’ll study the play and basic principles of Shakespearean comedy, and we’ll create a methodology for reading scenes in a group. The play consists of many groups of characters of different ages and stature, whose stories mix into each other like in a dream: the wedding of the King, the story of the young lovers, the fairies’ struggles, and the mechanicals’ attempt to stage a play. This multitude of storylines will serve as the basis for the study of Shakespeare’s comic writing and for the collaborative performance of scenes from the play, which will bring out contemporary images and ideas. In the second part of the course (meetings 7-13) the students will implement what they have studied about the play as they collaborate and co-create scenes from the play together with participants who join the project at the elderly centers.