A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare is always a different nut to try and crack mainly because of the language. A great number of actors would rather eat dog food than attempt to tackle a Shakespearean classic. Not suprising, however, A Midsummer Nights Dream was the most widely produced Shakespeare piece in UIL OAP last year. The reasons are quite obvious as a great amount of time can be out of the way by simply getting rid of a majority of the players' scenes. I had never seen the play in it's entirety before until a couple of years ago at college production of it. One thing that most directors have a hard time with while cutting Shakespeare is making sure that the iambic pentameter and the story is not lost.
One of the great beauties of performing Shakespeare is that you can change the time and place and still make sense. My senior year in high school, we set A Midsummer Night's Dream in a Corporate office during the 80's. "The Woods" was the name of the company, the faeries were computer technicians and hair a mile high! One guy had the Flock of Seagulls hairdo. The set was made almost entirely out of carved, painted or covered Styrofoam. Resetting the time and locale can be a challenge and if u are smart and have a talented cast, it can be pulled off.
On the other hand, doing the traditional A Midsummer Night's Dream isn't bad idea. The judge wouldn't see anything new but you could amplify it's possibilities. I had also been involved in this play in Jr High with the traditional setting. To assist in transporting us into a different world, my director made everything a beautiful green. For example, behind Titania's bed, there was about two trifolds side by side which were draped with a green netting with leaves and flowers intertwined.
During the magic spell parts, there is opportunity to have fun with the lighting. Possibly add in some great looking gobos, dreamy colors and I envision a harp-like sound cue. So much can be done with this play that a director would have a field day. costuming would coordinate with whatever the director's concept is and go on from there. I strongly suggest that there be an explosion of color onstage to reflect the colorfulness of the script.