The Shakespeare Essay

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In the play Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare constructed a range of theatrical characters that has allowed actors to engage audiences over centuries. In this comic play, the characters that provided audiences with extreme comic entertainment are no other but the Mechanicals, amongst the Mechanicals, all the actors have a different way of bringing to life and consequently, engaging the audience, through voice, movement and their own motivation of their character as performers. However, within the play there are also elements of love, like the Athenian Lovers. By physicalizing the specific objectives that drives between the Athenian Lovers strongly engages the audiences, but supernatural is also an evitable element of the play which also strikes the audiences attention. Titania, the Queen of the fairies can definitely be brought to life on stage by using strong vocal skills as performer need to appeal to Titania’s superiority as a Queen. As a performer on stage the above skills are skills which will not only bring the characters to life but definitely engages the audience, and the perfect way to start is by harnessing their voice and movements.

When we think about the play Midsummer Night’s Dream, the first thing that comes up in our mind are the Athenian Lovers, but I believe it is the Mechanicals that attracts the most attention consequently entertains and engages the audience the strongest. The occupations of The Mechanicals provides an excellent platform for creation for performers who plays them on stage, specially with coordinating voice and movements truly brings them to life. This bunch of ‘wanna be Thespian actors’ each and every single one of them holds jobs which would be considered lower class and such back in time, audiences who could relate to them would have definitely enjoyed watching a slice of life on the stage. A very good example could be when I actor as Robin Starveling, who is someone that is very undernourished or emaciated character. With that sort of character in my mind I changed my voice into a soft tone and speaking in a very low volume with pauses in between words, “All I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thornbush, my thornbush; and this dog, my dog,” when speaking like this it gives the audience a sense of feel of just how uncomfortable and scared Starveling is on the stage performing. Then even better, I in cooperated the moves, by walking up on stage with both foot very closely together, taking little baby steps and lowered my back a little to make myself look fragile and self conscious. By cooperating voice and movement associations can definitely enhance and bring all The Mechanical characters to life but there are also skills that needs to be kept in mind which will also bring the character’s qualities and personalities to life, and entertain audiences.

The love triangle between the Athenian Lovers can be a useful performance tool, as these situations occur to us in real life and the audiences can relate to it. To engage the audiences even more, the performer should physicalise the specific objectives that fuel the complicated errors and confusing tangles between the Athenian Lovers. In a practical work shop, I acted as Helena throughout Act II scene I, when Helena was desperately clinging onto Demetrius where as, Demetrius attempts to escape from Helena’s desperate attempt to win him over. The first idea I got was to portray this scene as Helena as if she is a beggar chasing after someone she sees. In the practical workshop when I played Helena I lay on the ground and grabbed on Demetrius’ leg while delivering, “And even for that I do love you the more. I am your spaniel. And, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn you.” By doing this it shows the audience how infatuated she is towards Demetrius, to even top it off more, I got Demetrius to continuously kicking Helena off his leg while harmfully uttered,
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