A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595. The senior production is working on this play and I have been assigned the role of one of the many fairies of Tatiana. The setting for this play is in the Athens, Theseus, duke of Athens is planning to marry Hippolyta. The play starts of with Egeus telling Theseus about how his daughter Hermia refuses to marry Demetrius. Hermia is in love with Lysander and desire to marry him instead of Demetrius. Theseus give Hermia 2 options, to enter a nunnery or to obey her father and marry Demetrius. Lysander tries to protest however he is overruled by the law. This is the beginning of the plot and it is a very interesting and fun play to be part of because it has a very humorous side to the play.

I am taking part in senior production this year where we will be performing Midsummer Night’s Dream. Taking part in a play is something i haven’t don for a really long time, this will is going to be a challenge for me and I will develop new skills such as improvising and performing without stage fright.  This is a community-based creativity where I have to interact with the other performers and work together for the final performance. This will allow my growth in many areas such as my imagination, my passion; acting and it will also improve my drama skills. Acting with others will also allow me to demonstrate my skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively. I want to meet all the deadlines for senior production and perform well in the final performance. I will do this by keeping a constant schedule for practicing my lines and going to all of my senior production activities. I can do this if I manage my time properly and learning all my lines this October break and the I’ll see if I’m successful or not in our rehearsals. This will show my commitment and perseverance at the end on this year. There were 6 students from DP 1 participating in the play.

Final Performance done on 29th November and 30th November.
We are officially done with Senior production, completing all the performances without major mess ups feels really good and we all feel accomplished. Everyone in senior production did an amazing job and our technical crew were outstanding.

Overall, I learnt a lot however I probably will not do this again because it requires a lot of commitment which ends up interfering with my academics and I want to avoid that. Some of the learning outcomes of this project was my ability to demonstrate new developing acting skills in the 2 final performances.  I do not like singing in public because am terrible at it however singing with a group was not too bad which was quite challenging for me in the beginning. Working collaboratively brought together our whole final performance, with the tech crew helping us with the lighting and music just made it look amazing and it wouldn’t have been as good as it was if any component was missing.

We followed all the 5 stages of CAS as a group starting with Investigation

• Investigation
  We were recognizes each other’s strengths and weaknesses and since we were a huge group we needed a play which would include all of us. After Ms. Jackson and Mr. Trey discussed about this we came down to Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. We all read the summary of the play to get familiar with it before the preparation stage.
• Preparation
  This was the longest and stressful stage of this process because this was the basis of our performance. Since there were so many people to work with, if 1 person would be absent it would be very difficult to do the play realistically. We had extra preparation sessions on the weekends and this stage stretched on till the final week of the performance.
  We barely got any proper rehearsal practices because we were running short in time. The tech crew had to learn most of their cues of lighting and music on the final week which was also stressful. All the ‘fairies’ worked together to learn their lines because most of them were similar which showed the benefits of working collaboratively.

  

• Action
  The action stage was nerve-racking but I was excited for it to be over. I thought I would pause or stutter in front of a huge crowd because I usually get intimidated however I think I am improving on my stage fright because I had almost no trouble with the audience.
  I was so focused on my lines and getting through the play without messing up that the final 2 performance went by faster than I thought. I felt a breeze of satisfaction and freedom at the end of our last performance on 30th November.

  

• Reflection and Demonstration
  This CAS blog is to show and include my reflection on each activity I do including Senior Production. Reflecting such as demonstrating each stage of CAS and what I found difficult such as the commitment and collaboration work improves or develops new skills in such areas. This post specifically is me demonstrating what I have learnt which ultimately solidifies my understanding of the different learning outcomes. These CAS stages increases my self-awareness and helped me understand that it is important to explore new or unfamiliar challenges. This activity also forced me to communicate and work with my peers in the play which was not exactly fun but crucial for the final performance.