Shakespeare Night

Sixth grade presented A Midsummer's Night Dream and fifth grade presented scenes from Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, and Hamlet at Shakespeare Night.

"I think deep down inside all of us, we long for adventure and something fantastic to happen. Sometimes the day-in, day-out routine can become humdrum and nothing seems as exciting as it did when we were younger. A Midsummer Night's Dream certainly shows us the benefit of being careful what you wish for. Many of our characters act foolishly in the hopes to win someone's affection or to get their way, and there are consequences for their choices. But the play doesn't read as a morality lesson. Instead, it whisks us away to a magical forest where mortals and fairies intersect in an evening of mix-ups, mayhem and eventual reconciliation.

One of the reasons Shakespeare continues to enthrall today may be because he drew on that longing for adventure and the element of the fantastic by placing it in many of his plays. Shakespeare's observations of people, combined with his imagination, allowed him to create characters that transport us to locations far away and long ago while also reminding us of ourselves. As C.S. Lewis said, "The Fantastic or Mythical ... if it is well used by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to [generalize] while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form ... whole classes of experience and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it."
                             -Kara Faraldi, Director's Note, A Midsummer Night's Dream