All the Ridge’s a stage!
A theater troupe put on Shakespeare’s “A Mid-Summer Nights Dream” at Owl’s Head Park on Aug. 23. Most of the play’s action goes down in an enchanted wood, so producers didn’t need to worry about building a backdrop for the action, because Owl’s Head is plenty enchanting, the director said.
“Owl’s Head Park is a set in and of itself — its such a beautiful, flexible space,” said director Gianna Cioffi of performing arts group BrooklynOne Productions.
Indeed, the seemingly pared-down production was more akin to what audiences would have seen in the Bard’s time, when backdrops were minimal and characters’ lines indicated their surroundings, Cioffi said.
“In Shakespeare’s era they really wouldn’t have had any major sets — they relied on costumes and props,” she said. “Everything’s in the words for Shakespeare anyway — everything gets described so well.”
The production marks BrooklynOne’s third foray into the park. The company performed a Shakespeare medley in 2013, and last year it put on “Rome and Juliet,” Cioffi said.
This go-around, the troupe performed “A Mid-Summer Nights Dream” because it is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known comedies, and Cioffi made some edits in an effort to render the more-than-400-year-old play more accessible for modern audiences and theatrical first-timers.
“We were trying to find something that people would be familiar with,” she said. “We scrambled some of the scenes to put an emphasis on magic in the play and focused on things appealing to children.”
