Dream at First Sight

Complications, Complications

A Good First session by most reckoning. Despite the fact that Steve goes to The Arts Factory in Parkhurst Road at 9.30, has a walk round the prison perimeter and meets and greets a couple of students who turn out not to be on his list and who, as far as they know are studying a completely different play, and not Midsummer Night's Dream at all.

Then Jacek arrives. Steve realises he has been told the wrong place and sets off for MG80. The class begins 20 minutes and more late. Hmmm.

The first half comprises a lot of contact improvisation. In pairs. Swopping pairs. Two on one. Five on one. Seven on one. One on two. Sometimes each pairing or group is left to their own devices for longer periods. Sometimes they get the instruction to change and change and change. We have a little talking, in groups of three, about what we discovered in doing this. And we have a group share about these discovery's. Stuff about freshness. Trying not to anticipate or 'help' the active partner etc.

Towards the end, before half-time, we do a Round Robin to see what we know about Shakespeare. In turn we can say one thing we know. If we don't have anything to share at that particular point we can 'pass'. We go round the circle a number of times. Sometimes people who passed on one turn of the circle think of something on the next - and say it. We're pooling our knowledge a bit.

When we come back, without recourse to the text, we try to reconstruct the play Midsummer Night's Dream. We identify the four main groups of people: The Betrothed of Athens, The Lovers, The Mechanicals and The Fairy World.

We start by looking at the lovers (plus Egeus). We have quite a hard time understanding the relationships between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Egeus so we 'cast' it and we ask the actors to stand 'onstage' in approximate physical relationships with one another. So we have our Hermia (Noura) in the centre with our Lysander (Fola) on her left. They hold hands. On Hermia's right is sat Demetrius but she is not holding his hand and she is turned away from him somewhat. Behind and between Demetrius and Hermia is stood Egeus, at one point putting his hand on Demetrius's head. On Hermia's far right is Helena, slightly disconnected from everyone.

The five are 'hot-seated'. Who do you love? Does he love you? What does your father think about that? What do you think he will do if you don't obey him? etc. Over a period of no more than ten minutes we establish clearly in front of the whole group the Rubik's Cube of relationships and tensions among the lovers and Egeus. But until this moment the protagonists haven't been able to speak to one another. The whole group is now split into groups of five and each group casts itself and is now allowed to interact.

An extraordinary thing happens. Within a few minutes all three groups are on their feet, struggling, arguing, pulling this way and that as all the tensions express themselves.

We sit down. We reflect on this for a moment. Everyone has seen it and felt it. Everyone has got the Lover's Dilemma from the inside. We touch briefly on objectives. How it was easy - and exciting - for everyone to play the roles - and to stick to the roles - because each participant had a clear goal or thing that they wanted.

We promised to return to this later.

We do a similar process with the Mechanicals, mainly concentrating on the Pyramus and Thysbe play. Together we establish the story. We again cast it so that we have a Wall, Moonlight, P and T a Lion and a director. And we 'perform' it there and then, including some of the lines we remember. We have the chink. We have kissing through the chink. We have the bloody handkerchief. The lion's roar. The double suicide. We also note the similarity of the story with Romeo and Juliet - and some of the parallels with the MSND story itself.

We also cast Oberon, Titania, The Changeling boy and Puck and we try to establish, physically, the relationship between them and why O wants the changeling.

And we 'reconstruct' at least half, maybe two thirds of the play including the flight into the forest, all the misadventures with the magic juice from the flower, and all the transformations up to and including Demetrius and Lysander falling in love with Helena, Hermia's rejection and Titania waking up and falling in love with Bottom.

It's the end of the three hours. We pledge to go away and read the play in the light of the concrete knowledge we now have of the relationships. We all seem to be confident that this has helped us.