http://faerye.net/post/the-faerye-proposes-a-midsummer-nights-dreamComments on "The Faerye proposes: A Midsummer Night's Dream" - Faerye Net2003-07-11T23:38:03+00:00http://faerye.net/post/the-faerye-proposes-a-midsummer-nights-dream#comment-222Re: Costuming Considerations2003-07-11T23:38:03+00:002003-07-11T23:38:03+00:00<p>Ooh! I actually thought about that for Titania - the fact that the boy’s mother was a “votary in her temple”... I think it would help accrete more mythic proportions to them, too. Excellent suggestion! They must be foreign - I actually toyed with the idea of making them aggressively modern/anachronistic—out of time and of all times. Spatial foreignness also great.<br />
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I will think further on the costuming ideas, but my first impulse on the fairies is to go fairly simple - go for color. Choose a good symbolic color and do that color completely - if no shoes in the right color are available, stick with socks. If feasible, use glitter/makeup and temporary hair-streaker - it helps young people in classroom settings to act if they have a physical mask, however thin. I had to play Athena in a classroom once (Derek Walcott’s <em>Odyssey</em>) and just putting on every bit of cold (and I mean cold, someone asked me if I had frostbite) blue makeup I had made me feel Other. For the monochromes, I’d of course suggest something extreme for Puck - either garish, red, or black/purple/blue, sinister.<br />
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Puck could safely go street-chic, as you considered—since he is mischievous. But the nameless Fairy seems a more subdued (Orchid!) fairy of Titania’s train, and should be more conventional, possibly even childlike.<br />
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The lovers…hmm. I’d say, to represent the hidebound Athenian dress in a way your kids will understand, go for Catholic school outfits, and then rumple, soil, spindle and mutilate as desired both for realism (as by that point they’ve spent the night in the woods) and comic effect. Play up the Hermia-aggression thing if you feel you can trust them not to hurt each other. That was the really hilarious scene in the production we saw.<br />
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I will think further on’t.</p>felicityhttp://faerye.net/post/the-faerye-proposes-a-midsummer-nights-dream#comment-218Costuming Considerations2003-07-11T19:55:43+00:002003-07-11T19:55:43+00:00<p>A costuming convention I’ve always liked for the faeries in Midsummer, and one that I feel is drastically underused, is Indian-style (faux or authentic) costuming. Oberon and Titania are both referenced as traveling frequently in India and the Near East, their main object of contention is an Indian boy, and the concept of magical things coming from India fits in perfectly with the conceits of Europe’s fantastic Orientalisms from Shakespeare’s era to the late 1800s. Big flowy silk pants, brightly colored capes, batik prints, and henna designs. Tasty.<br />
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On another note, some of my charges this summer will be performing scenes from Midsummer—I’ve got a young lovers’ scene (3.2) and a Puck-Fairy scene (2.1). Any suggestions on cheap but interesting costuming that’s not the standard faux-Elizabethan garbage, maybe in a modern style? I was considering messing around with hip-hop conceits, but I’m not sure if that’s appropriate.</p>Rock Star