Wella, wella, wella Uh!  Those Midsummer Nights

Plays are like old friends.  For the brief time that they are part of your life they mean the world to you.  Then things change and you move on.  But good plays just like good friends (and bad pennies) are bound to turn up again throughout your life and if you are that lucky, you pick up right where you left off.

My first experience with A Midsummer Night’s Dream was in Galveston, Texas back in the summer of 1986 (or was it ’87?) where I was being paid to perform in the chorus for three musicals.  Once all three were up and running my cast mates and I had a lot of free time on our hands.  So many of us would mount our own “after hours” mini-productions.  Some would choreograph dance concerts, while others like me would mount the one act they’d written that year in college.  Being artists, some would have even loftier goals.  And so it was that one of the actors decided to mount an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at midnight for three nights one weekend late that sticky August in Galveston.

And although I had hoped to be cast in my dream role “Puck”; the director decided to cast all the immortals from the dancers in the company which I was decidedly not.  I instead ended up playing “Egeus” the cantankerous old father to one of the young lovers.  This was just the latest in a long line of old men I have played for a decade, decades before I had any right to do so.  And before it seemed like it had just begun, that weekend performing Shakespeare under the stars faded and soon after that blissful summer faded too followed by college and so on and so on and life went on.

Now, here we are three decades later.  Some of what is left of my hair is the color of the clown white I brushed through it that long lost weekend in the late 80’s and the lines on my face need no longer be filled in with brown greasepaint in order to be seen by the audience and its my pleasure to bring Kentucky Shakespeare to our stage with their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Much like my first experience so many summers ago and so many states away, I am once again the old man and I have no idea what this director has in mind, but I have faith in the play because like all good friendships this one has stood the test of time.

Hello old friend.

Kentucky Shakespeare presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the PAC on Friday, March 16 at 7PM.

This month the PAC Kid Spotlight shines on Sarah Sanborn from Central Hardin High School.  Catch her and the rest of CHHS Drama at the PAC in their production of the musical Footloose on March 9th and 10th.  Learn more about Sarah and our other PAC Kids.

Congratulations to our Jabber Survey Winners:  Vicki Pitcher and Diana Conley . We hope to see you back at the PAC very soon!