Midsummer Nights Dream | hpurplepieproduction

Welcome to The Midsummer Nights Dream Rehearsals page

Here you will find what happened in my audition, blogs of our rehearsals progress and also feedback on our productions

The Audition

The part I have auditioned for is Titania which is the Queen of the fairies in this production. We were given a monologue to learn two weeks before the audition.

Titanias Monologue

These are the forgeries of jealousy
And never since the middle summers spring
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea
To dance our ringlets to the whistling win
But with thy brawl thou hast disturbed our sport,

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain
As in revenge have sucked up from the sea

Contagious fogs which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents
The ox hath there stretched his yoke in vain
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard

My audition could have gone better. My faults with this would of been because I did not learn it early enough. I find it hard to learn Shakespeare and I think I had that on my mind throughout my audition. To me it is like learning another language.

I forgot some lines and the panel thankfully gave me a chance to run through it again. I did do better but I still was not happy with it. I also let the panel know that I would like to be considered for the part Puck and also Hermia. Puck is Titanias and Oberons fairy helper who causes the trouble in the woods between the lovers. Hermia is a mortal who is in love with the character Lysander. Unfortunatly another character Demetrius is in love with Hermia and Hermias father wants her to marry Demetrius. Also Hermias best friend Helena is in love with Demetrius but wants nothing to do with her. It ends up as a huge love triangle that changes in every act.

When we got given the cast list I saw that I had been given the part of Hermia. Which I am very happy with as it is a challenging character for myself to play as it is not the normal characters I get given.

1st Rehearsal

Throughout rehearsals the Mortals, Fairys and the mechanicals are split into groups with different teachers. Me being the Mortals group we have Laurence for our director. First rehearsal we were introduced to other cast members and then it was more about knowing what the play is about. We sat together with some Tech team members and discussed what we know and what we didn't know about the play. When we were all certain what we were playing, how we would play our characters and also what the play is about we then started a read through.
Laurence had the four lovers to sit in a square, one in each corner and face the character who we were speaking to. This was to get more of a feel for it and understand what we are saying and who we are saying it to.
From this first rehearsal I know that myself the other mortal and our director will defiantly help each other and I think we will make a great team.

2nd Rehearsal

In this rehearsal we started to run the first scene together where Hermia and Lysander agree to run away with each other. Laurence told us that the stage would be set in the middle of the theatre with the audience all around them. This means we have four exits. The normal upstage left and right exits and also the exits where the audience enter the theatre. When running this scene together we were trying to get a feel for where we would enter and exit from. The first scene felt as if it went well but would be better when we do not have our scripts in our hands.

3rd Rehearsal

Our third rehearsal began with running the beginning scene again with Hermia and Lysander. When running this scene we all noticed that our characters Demetrius and Lysander have already learnt their lines. I was very impressed with this as I am finding it hard to learn my lines. After running this scene we then moved into the next room to give the Fairies more space. We sat back in our square and then ran our lines with each other. I find this technique very useful as we can see each others expressions properly when looking in their eyes and it becomes useful as we can prompt each other when we struggle.

4th Rehearsal

Our director Laurence wanted us to learn the lines from the fight scene as it is a big scene and he wants it to be very powerful. Ali who plays Lysander and Phil who plays Demetrius have already learnt their lines which came very handy when we started to run this scene. When running through this scene we could feel like it was a very powerful scene as there was a sudden change in emotion. We also know that we had to work on some fight moves such as a lift when Hermia (Myself) goes to attach Helena (Katherine) Lysander and Demetrius would go to catch me as they both love Helena at this point. I find this scene very challenging but exciting and I can play with being angry. I know that I defiantly need to learn my lines soon as possible but also I am struggling with It being Shakespeare.

5th Rehearsal

Unfortunately I was absent from this rehearsal but I have used this time to catch up on my work and also learn my lines.

Midsummer Nights dream was a very succesful show that we all put together. The production took place in the Hazel Pearson Theatre in Middlesbrough College and everynight was a near sell out. As i have not performed in a Shakespeare play before i thought having the part of Hermia would be challenging. Another reason i thought this part would be challenging is because i have never played a serious typical "Lover" type role in my past productions. At the beginning of the rehearsals i did feel comfortable having to show these romantic emotions to another cast member but further throughout the rehearsals i started to feel comfortable and developed a good performance relationship with my characters "Lover". I have learnt new techniques for a serious role and i now feel comfortable playing similar parts in the future.
My Feedback for this production was postive as i had comments such as.
"We really felt that you loved your characters lover" and "we believed that you were heartbroken at the correct points in the show." Other audience feedback also commented on how they liked when i could cry on stage to show my heartbreak.

Overall i am very happy and pleased with how our show got put together and that our audiences were happy with what they came to see.