Flux Theatre Ensemble

Hey all,

So, a quick break from Gus' deep exploration of this already-deep play to remind you about the Early Bird ticket discount for select dates. That discount expires at midnight tonight! So if you've been thinking about coming during the first week but you haven't bought your tickets, now's the time to do it!

Using the code IC512 at the Theatermania site will net you $12 tickets to the following dates:

Thursday, June 5 @8pm
Saturday, June 7th @8pm
Sunday, June 8th @3pm
Tuesday, June 10th @8pm
Thursday, June 12th @8pm

Tickets for opening night, June 6, is not discounted, but includes a free and awesome party, so it's like it's discounted!

And look how awesome our Titania (Kira Blaskovich) is! Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Things are not good in Athens.

It's important to say that, right off the bat. Theseus, after jilting the Amazon princess Antiope, abducts their Queen Hippolyta. A war ensues between Athens and the Amazons, and while Athens eventually wins, the cost is the Amazon's way of life and many lives on both sides.



"Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries"


(Aaron Michael Zook as Theseus, Frederique Nahmani as Hippolyta. Photo: Heather Cohn.)

How can this 'happy' marriage seem anything more than a ceremonial rape? It is no wonder that Hippolyta sees the moon as a drawn bow aimed at her, and Theseus must ask "What cheer, my love?"


Then Egeus comes in, demanding his daughter marry Demetrius or die; a fate mitigated only somewhat by Theseus in his proposal she join the nunnery.


(David Douglas Smith as Egeus, Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum)

And according to Titania, her war with Oberon has created a series of horrific natural disasters that have led to famine, fields full of flocks dead from sheep-sickness, drought and flooding, disease, and the ruin of the countryside.

War, starvation, plague, rape, and a state that will not allow the pursuit of happiness; this is how Shakespeare opens his comedy; and we do the complexity of the this play a disservice to smooth that over. Instead, we should take Lysander's rhapsody on the impossibility of love in such a world seriously:

Or if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary, as a sound:
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That (in a spleen) unfolds both heaven and earth;
And ere a man hath power to say, behold,
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

That such a world can be brought to harmony in the natural (fairy), domestic (lovers) and political (royals) spheres is nothing short of magic; and the darker we set the curse at the beginning of the play, the more surprising and well-earned the eventual blessing.

And the more dangerous and fraught with limits we make the human world, the more dazzling and dangerous we make the limitlessness of the fairy world; and the more sublime their union in the bower of Titania and Bottom becomes.
Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Hannah Rose Peck as Cobweb, Caitlin Kinsella as Mustardseed, Tiffany Clementi as Pease Blossom)

In Flux's Season of Transformation, the central theme is how life transforms the body against the body's will. In Midsummer, that transformation ends in marriage, and is therefore a comedy in the classic sense (order restored by the affirmation of life in the union of marriage). It is also, of course, ridiculously funny.

But just as a tragedy like Hamlet is also funny, we should not assume that a comedy (especially one of Shakespeare's) is without significant darkness. In fact, the darker and more dangerous the world of the play, the more satisfying the return to light. Given the centrality of the body to our season, we are setting a fairy world of limitless physical possibility against a mortal world fraught with loss.

Specifically, this means creating a stage language where the characters do not always reside in the bodies of the actors playing them. The fairies can be as small as a pin or as big as the stage; they can take corporeal shape and disappear in a blink; and their energy and agency can manifest in all sorts of theatrically surprising ways. By creating a fairy world that is bound only by the complicit imaginations of the actors and audience; we will draw a sharp contrast with the mortal world, where the limited humans, trapped in their bodies, have their hearts and shapes transformed by fairies against their will.

The primary language to accomplish this is shadow, drawn from Oberon's status as "King of Shadows" and Puck's end of play plea, "If we shadows have offended".

(Michael Davis as the King of Shadows. Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum).

Examples:
-Oberon can manifest his will by throwing his shadow across the stage, and his first several entrances are preceded by his shadow's appearance.
-Bottom's initial transformation into an ass happens behind a backlit screen, projecting the openly theatrical costume change in shadow across the rude mechanicals.
-Puck's shape-shifting to terrorize the mechanicals is accomplished behind the screen, with the bodies of the fairies creating hog, horse and headless bear.
-Bottom's second transformation, the purgation of his mortal grossness by Titania, is seen through an increasingly rapid shadow silhouette thrown across the stage from various angles.
-The changeling boy is represented by a child's silhouette in a ball of light.
-The prologue and epilogue begin and end with Puck appearing, and then leaving, Oberon's shadow.

The secondary language is shared agency, where Oberon, Puck and Titania use the fairies to extend their being and accomplish their will.

Examples:
-Titania and Oberon use the fairies to extend their stage size: Titania with her long, snake-like train of moon-silver; and Oberon with his high and wide plume of dark shadow
-Puck steals the voices of the fairies to echo her shape-shifting terrorizing of the mechanicals.
-Puck steals the voices of the lovers to lead them astray.
-The fairies themselves share an agency, splitting the lines of the First Fairy amongst all five, both separate and connected, almost like a hive mind.

The tertiary stage language used to create the limitless fairy world is the rules of assuming corporeal shape.

Examples:
-The fairies have three states of stage presence: the first, a neutral state where they can be seen by Oberon, Titania and the audience but can only be felt or sensed by the mortals; the second, a wisp of light created by a hand held LED, that flickers in and out of vision when they speak or briefly manifest shape; and the third and most tangible (visible to mortals), a fairy created by the face of the actor speaking, and the hands of the actors behind, accomplished through face paint delineating the 'fairy body' and the LED held below the face, cutting it off from the actor's body. Having the face of the actor be the body of the fairy also reinforces the synesthesia of the play.
-Oberon and Titania can become invisible simply through will (or, more comically, by saying, "I am invisible", as in Oberon's case.)

The final stage language used is the linkage of the natural world to the emotional state of the fair characters.

Example:

-This is accomplished most notably through Titania's words regarding the natural disasters caused by the dispute between her and Oberon.
-Titania's train also becomes the river that Bottom sees himself in, and when Bottom accidentally steps in the river, Titania awakes and sees the angel. The river is both water and an extension of herself, which she will then use to wrap Bottom in a cocoon of her power for the purgation of his mortal grossness.
-When Oberon and Titania battle, the trees of the forest shake and bend as their unseen power shoots back and forth.
-Both Titania and Puck can make the trees move to block Bottom from leaving, or lead the lovers to their sleeping destination.

Of course, the greatest stage language used to accomplish the incorporeal limitlessness of the fairy world is Shakespeare's language, where Puck can "make a girdle about the earth in forty minutes" and the first fairy can travel "swifter than the moon's sphere".

And by creating this limitlessness, the mortal world, fraught with war, loss and a tyrannical state that denies natural love, will seem all the more dangerous and limited. With that great divide between the two worlds established, Bottom's sojourn across the divide becomes much more than just a goofy ass french-kissing fairy, but rather a mortal's rare brush with something divine.

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Hannah Rose Peck as Cobweb, Caitlin Kinsella as Mustardseed, Tiffany Clementi as Pease Blossom)

And a more candid fairy shot to remind us that this is, after all, a play...
Read the full story

What is the Imagination Compact?

And how can learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

1. What's the best directed play of Shakespeare's you've ever seen?Inspired and brilliantly funny production of The Winter's Tale by a grad student at Trinity Repertory Company about five years ago.

2. What Shakespeare play would you most like to direct? King Lear. But not for about another twenty or thirty years. I need to bea little bit older and a little bit wiser for this one.

3. What's the strangest choice you've seen a director make in a play ofShakespeare's? To have two actors act out the last act of Macbeth with small plastic dolls. It was awkward. And I couldn't sneak out of the theatre without beingnoticed. Bad experimental theatre in Spain.

4. Favorite Line of Text: "By the twitching of my thumbs, somethingwicked this way comes." (Macbeth) It's just so perfect! And it inspired a Ray Bradbury novel!

5. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters? Oh, they are dangerous, my friend, very, very dangerous.

6. If we could compact your imagination, what color would it be and why? Emerald green: rich, mysterious, signifying growth and new life (plus, I strive to be ecologically friendly!)

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?

And how can I learn more about Flux's Misdummer?

Jeremy Basescu

Playwright, The Mechanicals, May 19th

Flux History: Plays developed at Flux Sunday include A Wonderful Wife and Calling CQ

1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play?

*King Lear.* It creates such a complete, compelling world that I can't help
but get sucked into it every time I start reading. Nature and artifice,
family and bastardry, sex and insanity… and it's often a mess, but such a
fantastic mess that I just want to roll around in it, run through a
torrential storm, and howl.

2. What is your favorite line of text?

"If music be the food of love, play on." ~*Twelfth Night*


3. Does Shakespeare influence your writing at all?

Shakespeare influences how I breathe, how I think, and how I live my life.
Writing plays is an extension of each of those, and his influence is
inextricable from my imagination.  I grew up with the Charles and Mary Lamb
versions, played Sebastian in the second grade, and went to see
*Midsummer *outdoors
before I learned how babies are made.  Shakespeare's characters are more
real to me than most of the people I know, and they are just as likely to
show up in my plays.  Having said all that, I still haven't read through the
histories.  Someday.

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, whom would you date and
why?
Helena.  Totally.  Aside from that I have a soft spot for hard-luck cases, I
don't think there'd be a dull moment.  Also, I'm pretty sure she's hot.

5. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word "flux"?
A trampoline.

6. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Both (the best kind).  I think I might stay out of any long-term romantic
entanglements, though; last thing I need is a bad break-up followed by
waking up the next morning with a wombat for a head.

7. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible when the DeLorean reached
88mph, what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble got theatre
up to 88mph?
Marty McFly would play Hamlet.  This would officially signal the death of
theater.  On the bright side, all you need is a DeLorean to sneak into the
world premiere of *Titus Andronicus*.

8. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now, I'll just have to
do without my _______"
Sense of self-worth

9. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will, what
animal would you be and why?
An anteater.  I've always secretly wondered what those things are thinking.
I'm guessing it has something to do with ants, but there's only one way to
find out.

10. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer or the forest of
Arden?
Never bet against sweet Puck.

11. How many licks does it take...?
As many as possible.

12. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage or William Kemp?
Clearly Kemp.  Burbage was a pompous twit; Kemp was the funniest drunk
alive.  However, if we were going on a hunting trip, I'd take Burbage,
because Kemp would be much likelier to pull a Dick Cheney.

13. If we could compact your imagination, what color would it be and why?
Brown.  Put lots of colors together, and you get brown.  (I have no
imagination.)

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?

And how can learn more about Flux's Misdummer?

Gretchen Poulos

Actor, The Mechanicals, May 19th

Flux History: Icarus of Ohio at Have Another 2, many Flux Sundays

1. What Shakespeare role would you like to play next?
I have a number I'd like to play, but I think Joan of Arc in any of
the plays or Queen Margaret (in 50+ years), or Katherine in Taming of
the Shrew.

2.  What Shakespeare role would you like to play that no one will ever
cast you in?
Hamlet because it's a ridiculously awesome role. Or Juliet. Something
like that. I don't think I exactly come across as the ingénue, but
it'd be fun, just once to play that.

3. Describe the best Shakespeare production you've seen.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, who would you date and
why?
I would date either Oberon because he's kind of possessive and really
fights for what he wants, and I think that's a little dysfunctional
but kind of hot, or I would date the mechanical that roars like a lion
because he's got a sense of humor. I wouldn't date Demetrius or
Lysander – I think they're both lame.

5. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word "flux"?
In transition. Movement. Sunday fun.

6. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Neither – I like to think of them as Titania's secret service – in disguise.

7. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible when the DeLorean
reached 88mph, what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble
got theatre up to 88mph?
Errgh…we would be flying? 

8. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now, I'll just
have to do without my _______"
Pants.

9. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why?
I would be a chameleon because they can go anywhere and blend in, and
I think it's fun, sometimes, to be able to scoot around with no one
knowing you are there.

10. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer or the forest of
Arden?
The forest of Arden – definitely. No, no, I take that back – neither –
the forest of DITKA!!!

11. How many licks does it take...?
Depends on what you're up to – but I'd say at least 80.

12. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage or William Kemp?
I don't like beer.

13. If we could compact your imagination, what color would it be and why?
It would be rainbow colored, but mostly orange, because of the energy
and passion and warmth and love of creation behind it.

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?

And how can learn more about Flux's Misdummer?

Brian Pracht

Playwright, The Mechanicals, May 19th

History with Flux: Demetrius in Midsummer Night's Dream, frequent participant in Flux Sundays and Retreat 2007

1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play? OTHELLO

2. What is your favorite line of text? "Gertrude, do not drink." from HAMLET Act 5, Scene 2

3. Does Shakespeare influence your writing at all? If by "influence" you mean "stealing", then yes.

4. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters? Dangerous playmates

5. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible when the DeLorean reached 88mph, what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble got theatre up to 88mph? I can't tell you; it would disrupt the space-time continuum. Oh, what the hell. All I can tell you is: don't trust Heather.

6. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now, I'll just have to do without my _______" Cossacks

7. How many licks does it take...? How much alcohol's involved...?

8. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage or William Kemp? Definitely Kemp. Think about it. Shakespeare wrote HAMLET, OTHELLO, RICHARD III, and LEAR for Burbage, so, Dick's probably not the happiest drunk.

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

David Ian Lee

Actor, The Lovers, May 12th

Flux History: Flux Sunday regular as actor, director and playwright; plays developed include Sleeper and Dog Show

1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play?
Tough call. Possibly Two Gentlemen of Verona, though Hamlet will laways hold a special place in my heart.

2. What is your favorite line of text?
Top three (I'm bad at choosing)

HAMLET: There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.

JAQUES: I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

3. Does Shakespeare influence your writing at all?
No doubt unconsciously: His work is profuse and masterful, and if you take into account his ghost-edit of the King James Bible, Shakespeare's writing has likely had more influence on Western literary culture than any wordsmith imaginable. And, come to think of it, the play I'm working on is a revenge-thriller in the Five Act model, so...

4. if you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers,
whom would you date and why?
Titania. 'Cause.

5. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word 'Flux'?
Good times.

6. Fairies: Colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
How about dangerous playmates? Ain't that the best kind?

7. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now,
I'll just have to do without my _____"
Pants.

8. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal you be and why?
Hmmm...well if its against my will, I suppose it'd have to be something
that I really have no interest in being...mollusks seem to have a tough life.
Nope, don't want that. So...I'm going with mollusk.

9. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage or William Kemp?
Kemp, though amusing, would no doubt start to be a pain in the arse after a while.

10. If we could compact your imagination, what color would it be, and why?
Not sure of the color, but I'm sure it would be sticky.
Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

Jeff Lewonczyk

Playwright, The Royals, May 12th

(None of the women above are, in fact, the Jeff Lewonczyk. All three do, however, appear in his play Babylon, Babylon, which you should see.)

1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play?
I've always felt like my favorite Shakespeare play is one that I haven't read yet, maybe even one that hasn't been discovered or doesn't exist. I've stopped reading any Shakespeare plays that I'm not already familiar with, so I can have the opportunity to discover them onstage first. It's nice to leave something unknown to look forward to.

2. What is your favorite line of text?
Weirdly for a writer, I'm bad with quotations. Though when I look at something like the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth, and see that pretty much every line in it has been used as a title for something else, I'm pretty damn impressed.

3. Does Shakespeare influence your writing at all?
I mean, God, of course. Last year I directed a show called Macbeth Without Words, which was, sure enough, true to the title – a dance- and silent film-inspired reimagining of the play. I ended up getting quoted in the Times dissing Shakespeare, which was partly an exponent of the cheeky context in which I was speaking (as one of the producers of the Brick Theater's Pretentious Festival), but also with a grain of truth: I don't think any writer, even one as great as Shakespeare, should be forced to endure the mantle of perfection and supremacy that's been dropped on his shoulders. I find his poetry as fusty and obnoxious in certain places as I find it beautiful and indispensable in others. But what I'm most indebted to/in awe of in Shakespeare is his scope and audacity – how could anybody write such big plays about such big things and stay sane? This is partly a result of the Elizabethan dramaturgical tradition – all the reflective sub-plots, cascading scene structures, and jumbles of disparate elements, comic and tragic alike – but Shakespeare did some incredible things with the style of his times, things that I think still serve as boundaries for us to explore and, perhaps eventually, surpass.

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, whom would you date and why?
Helena, no question. Hermia's a brat, and though she may be more superficially sane than her counterpart, I've always felt that Helena hid greater depths – like, once she got her shit together, she'd be way more interesting to go out with – and, yes, settle down with, etc. Also, my wife played Helena in high school, and I know which side my bread is buttered on.

3. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Why must we choose?

4. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible when the DeLorean reached 88mph, what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble got theatre up to 88mph?
If it were trying to do so on, say, the Taconic Parkway, it would most likely get heavily ticketed, as happened to me several times in college. And once the cops found the plutonium in the trunk, forget it. This is why so many of us make theatre in New York City – fewer State Troopers, and much easier access to plutonium.

5. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will, what animal would you be and why?
I obviously wouldn't have much say in the matter, so I'd have to say a jellyfish, because really, I have no interest whatsoever in being a jellyfish. They're gross.

6. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer or the forest of Arden?
Depends on the rules of the fight. In a public, televised, heavily refereed fight I think the forest of Arden would win – it's the "good guy" forest, and it plays fair. But if we're talking a back-alley bare-knuckle altercation, with no one else around, the Midsummer forest would wipe the concrete with Arden. I would not unduly provoke the Midsummer forest. Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

August Schulenburg

Playwright, The Royals, April 28th



1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play?

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

Aaron Zook

Actor, The Fairies, April 28th



(Pictured here in Impetuous' 12th Night of the Living Dead)

1. What Shakespeare role would you like to play next? 
Hamlet.

2.  What Shakespeare role would you like to play
that no one will ever cast you in?
Aaron the Moor

3. Describe the best Shakespeare production you've seen. 
I've never seen a live production that fully satisfied me
(though I've been fortunate enough to perform in some good 'uns).
I've seen video of Trevor Nunn's Macbeth with Ian McLellan and Judy
Dench, and it fairly knocked my socks off. Spare, economical, unsettling.
No flash, no grand concept: just fantastic actors mining the text for all it's worth.

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers,
who would you date and why?
They're all schmucks. I'd rather be single.

5. What is the first thing you think of when 
you hear the word "flux"? 
"Acid re-"

6. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters? 
Depends on the phase of the moon
and the direction of the wind.

7. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible
when the DeLorean reached 88mph,
what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble 
got theatre up to 88mph? 
It would engage the company's Improbability Drive,
and we'd all turn into sacks of yarn.

8. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now,
I'll just have to do without my _______" 
OED.

9. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why? 
Since it's against my will, I suppose it's up to the
capricious fairy. If it were an ass, though,
I'd be more in the Eeyore vein.

10. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer
or the forest of Arden?
Unless Arden's fairies are just being coy,
the Midsummer forest by first-round TKO.

11. How many licks does it take...? 
I never made it without biting.

12. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage 
or William Kemp? 
Feh. Give me some sack and Bill Shakes.

13. If we could compact your imagination,
what color would it be and why?
Complete absence of color.
Having achieved sufficient density to become a quantum
singularity, light would be unable to escape the
gravitational pull of my imagination.

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

Anthony Wills Jr.

Actor, The Royals, May 12th

1. What Shakespeare role would you like to play next?  
Othello

2.  What Shakespeare role would you like to play 
that no one will ever cast you in?  
Titania

3. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, 
who would you date and why?   
Lysander: If I can't play him I'd date him

4. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word "flux"? 
Acid reflux (sorry)

5. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Tricksters

6. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible when the 
DeLorean reached 88mph, what do you think would happen 
if Flux Theatre Ensemble got theatre up to 88mph?
They'd rule the world!

7. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now, 
I'll just have to do without my _______"  
Virginity

8. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why?  
Mink

9. How many licks does it take...?  
depends on how good you are at licking

10. If we could compact your imagination,
what color would it be and why?
Clear there's no recognizable color that can describe my imagination.

Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?

1. What Shakespeare role would I like to play next? 
Angelo, Iago, Benedick

2. What Shakespeare role would I like to play that I won't ever play?  
Son from Henry VI Pt. 3 because of his one line:
ll blows the wind that profits nobody. 
 This man, whom hand to hand I slew in fight, 
 May be possessed with some store of crowns; 
 And I, that haply take them from him now, 
 May yet ere night yield both my life and them 
 To some man else, as this dead man doth me. 
 Who's this? O God! it is my father's face, 
 Whom in this conflict I unwares have kill'd. 
 O heavy times, begetting such events! 
 From London by the king was I press'd forth; 
 My father, being the Earl of Warwick's man, 
 Came on the part of York, press'd by his master; 
 And I, who at his hands received my life, him 
 Have by my hands of life bereaved him. 
 Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did! 
 And pardon, father, for I knew not thee! 
 My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks; 
 And no more words till they have flow'd their fill

3. What's the best Shakespeare production you've seen?
The best Shakespeare I've ever seen?  Tough...really tough... For the sake
of argument, I'll go with the production of Twelfth Night I saw a couple
years ago at the Gamm Theatre in Providence.  The solid, long-term
ensemble owns that little black-box theatre.  The cast relied on each
other to build a powerful world and tell consistent story...
and they executed jokes with skill and energy.  Hard to describe
a theatrical event without going into long-winded detail...
Oh, and for posterity's sake,
let me point out that Olivier's Othello is TIMELESS!!

4. Which of the Midsummer lovers would you date?
I like tall chicks, but Helena seems depressive... Hermia.

5. What do you think of when you hear the word "Flux"?
Flux makes me think chaos, disarray, change, in-between,
nor here nor there.

6. Fairies: Colorful playmates, or dangerous tricksters?
Faeries are dangerous, mutha-f*#ka!  Stay away from them!

7. Complete this sentence: 
"It's too late to go back now, I'll just have to do without my ______"
contract.

8. If a fairie turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why?
If a faerie turned me into a sloth, I'd probably find a faster animal to kill me.

9. Who would win in a fight: the forest of Arden
or the forest of Midsummer?
Midsummer Forest would win over Arden!  Arden's peaceful
and full of apathetics (well, as many apathetics and as much apathy
as one can find in a Shakespeare
play)...Titania alone would crush them!

10. How many licks does it take?  
Let's find out!

11. Who would you rather have a beer with, Richard Burbage
or Will Kemp?
Kemp's funnier, but he might be crazy.  Kemp.

12. If we compacted your imagination,
what color would it be and why?
I think my compacted imagination would like like a craisin, because I love them!

Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

So just what, exactly, is actor driven magic?

Actor-driven magic:
-Is overtly theatrical, with no attempt made to conceal the trick. The audience's imagination must therefore be complicit in the creation of the magic.
-Lives primarily in the body of the actors, celebrating the expressive potential and erotic presence of the human body.
-Is tactile and collaborative, with actors working together to create the sense of a power that transcends their individual selves.
-Is playful, both in the sense of being pleasurable in the openness of it's possibilities; and in the sense of acknowledging that pleasure as the actor playing the role. This is not the same as alienation, where the presence of the actor removes the audience from the reality of the character; rather, the acknowledgment of that pleasure by the actor invites the audience to take pleasure in their own imagination's complicity.
-Takes a lot of additional rehearsal, with actors laboring heavily so that their play may seem light.

In practice, the above principles have led to these production choices:
-The costumes should seem like something the actors themselves might wear if they were in these situations, with less emphasis placed on specific time and place; and more emphasis placed on helping to bridge the difference between actor and role.
-The fairy costumes should be fluid and evocative through simplicity; to achieve those qualities, we are using fabrics that can shift to perform more functions than simply costuming the characters; and can help in creating the scenery in this dream-like play. This allows the fairies to be literally one with the natural world of the stage.
-The scenery itself should also be fluid and evocative through simplicity; to achieve those qualities, a forest is implied through poles that can also be brooms, swords, spears, walls of a house, columns of a palace and flats of a stage; the scenery transforms into props in the same way our costumes transform into scenery.
-Props, costumes and scenery all must feel like extensions of the actors' performances; and must never inhibit or distract from the power of the human body.
- Because the magic of the play-proper is actor-driven, the play within the play should also feature actor-driven magic, only hopefully more comically mis-guided than our own. Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

The sexual union of Bottom and Titania is the heart of Midsummer, and the epiphany that Bottom experiences afterwards is it's center of gravity. It is a union of the sublime and the grotesque; of the divine and the natural; of the tragic and comic; of the immortal and mortal.

It is also, above all, the union of two characters who deeply need the transformative power of love. By submitting to that power, they both emerge with a greater capacity to experience life.

Titania is love with her own grief. She has spurned her partner Oberon, and obsesses over the changeling boy of her lost Votresse. Her grief, and Oberon's anger over her lost affection, wreak a terrible toll on the natural world; for her emotional life is intimately connected with her governance of nature. Her partner Oberon, and the world at large, both need her to let go of her grief.

Bottom is an obsessive artist convinced his upcoming performance will only go well if his hand is firmly in every pie. Stressing as much as strutting, he lives solely in the imaginative world of his theatre, but lacks the generosity and trust a true artist needs to create. His play cannot go forward until he learns to let go fully into the human experience.

In one of the great ironies of the play, Puck and Oberon's malevolent trick meant as punishment serves to release Titania and transform Bottom. Submitting to the incomprehensible power of the Love-In-Idleness, Titania gives away her adored changeling boy without a fight. In the presence of love, her grief is forgotten; and even if we assume her reconciliation with Oberon is a qualified one; her re-emergence as his equal partner is whole hearted. No lounger bound by grief, she is released by the transformative power of love, and so able to once again experience life fully.

And there is extra resonance that this love affair took place with a mortal, made more mortal through his transformation into an animal. Titania's wound was a mortal one, made by a mortal woman, and so it makes sense Oberon's love would be unable to salve it.

If Titania's sex with the mortal Ass heals her mortal wound; Bottom's brush with the divine creates an immortal one. She has, after all, said:

I will purge thee of thy mortal grossness so,
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Bottom has experienced the limitlessness of the Fairy Land; he has been purged of his mortal grossness, and then returned to it; and his epiphany that follows it is full of longing for what he may never have again, and regret for lacking the words to even say what it was:

Methought I was, there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had.
But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say, what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

How can you express the divine? How can you bring the ghost into the room? How can you give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name? Bottom doesn't know, until he sees one way:

I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet of this dream, it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.

Theatre, as Theseus will later agree, theatre is how you say what the eye of man cannot hear, and how you show what ear of man cannot see. Or at least, it's how we try.

Connecting the sexual union of ass and Goddess so directly to the act of making theatre changes the way we approach the play within the play; it is no longer just a comic gift tacked on to the end, but rather both a celebration of the power and mocking of the limits of the very attempt the play proper has been making. The play within the play should mirror comically our own attempts to give airy nothing a local habitation and a name; and Bottom's experience should burn through every ridiculous moment of their misguided but heartfelt Pyramus and Thisbe.

After all, when Pyramus says, "my soul is in the sky", Bottom must be thinking of when his own soul, purged of its mortal grossness, stretched limitlessly across the sky. In that moment, the sublime union of Bottom and Titania is mirrored by the ridiculous disunion of Pyramus and Thisbe; and all the airy nothing of the play lives in the ill-fated attempt of these players, these shadows. Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

(Christina Shipp as Bottom. Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum)

Ah, Bottom...how I dote on thee! Misprized most of Shakespeare's creations, you are so often played as a series of bits and attitudes: they make you the pompous blow-hard tearing a cat, bumbling over malapropisms, braying like an Ass, possessed (as the critics would have it), of an 'invincible ignorance'.

Well...yes. And yet if that were all, how diminished a play Midsummer would be!

For Bottom is deeply respected by his peers as an artist: Flute says he has "simply the best wit of any handy craft man in Athens" and Quince goes further: "and the best person too". He is problem-solver, the one everyone looks to when there is something impossible that must be done. And like any artist who has not yet found his six pence a day, he is utterly committed to making it.

Through this lens, his overbearing behavior in the first scene is less comic arrogance than the behavior of a perfectionist; an artist who will play every role if that's what it takes to make the play work.

And through this lens, those first scenes stay funny, but more deeply so because I myself, and so many of us who strive in this theatre world, are not all that different; necessity has us playing many roles and we must believe we can carry them off, because if we do not, the play does not go forward. We are all trying to find a way to let the moon shine in so we can make our six pence a day. And if these first scenes are played with the urgency of a perfectionist determined at all costs to make something beautiful; there is a deeper journey that begins to take shape.

If Bottom's Ass head merely reveals what we already knew about him - he is an ass- then the joke is little more than a sight gag. But if we believe that in these first scenes, Bottom is something else, than the ass head is not an obvious reveal, but a subtler transformation.


Because sexual desire is about to become such a huge part of Bottom's life, it is worth asking what his relationship to sex and love have been before this. Judging from his behavior in the previous scenes (more interested in the tyrant than the lover), and in the moment of meeting Titania (trying to run from her at first), we can assume that desire is not a regular part of Bottom's day; except for his desire for the theatre:


When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer.

He even dreams of the theatre. This overwhelming desire for theatre has perhaps kept our Weaver from having too many significant sexual relationships; Bottom lives in a world of his imagination, playing Ercles in his mind as he works over his loom. He may not be educated, he may stumble wonderfully over words; but he is not stupid, and he is sincerely driven.

He is an artist of the mind who is about to become an animal of the body. Now, Puck's transformation takes on more significance. Bottom now becomes a creature of appetite, begging to be scratched and fed.

But this transformation is not the most significant of Bottom's journey. Titania promises:

I will purge thee of thy mortal grossness so,
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.



There is no reason not to take her at her word. We do not see this purgation because Shakespeare doesn't stage everything that happens in their bower. But if we imagine what sex (if that's even the right word) with this Goddess might be like; if we imagine that this Titania, (whose every mood echoes out to change the weather, whose every whim changes the fabric of nature) does indeed through their intercourse purge him of his mortal grossness; if Bottom, for even a moment, does like an airy spirit go; then his final epiphany takes on a larger significance:

Methought I was, there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had.
But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say, what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

Normally, this is played as if Bottom is unaware that he is mixing up the eyes and ears of the bible quote. But what if it is deliberate? After all, no one is stupid enough to think that eyes hear; and while one accidental slip is possible; a string of them can only be deliberate.

So if we take Bottom at his word, then he has had an experience that can only be described if eyes could hear, if ears could see, if touch had taste, if taste could speak, and above all; only if the heart itself had language; only then could Bottom explain what happened; then this is something more than just becoming an ass, which after all, is bizarre but could be explained. This is also something more than the scenes we've seen, both pre and post coital with Titania. Bottom is talking about something we didn't see because we couldn't; Bottom is trying to explain what it feels like to have your mortal grossness purged; he is trying to say what it feels like to be an airy spirit.

Then something fantastic happens: Bottom realizes he can't tell us, but he might be able to put it into a play:
I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet of this dream, it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.

(It is, in fact, ballet - which meant something like ballad to Shakespeare's audience, and so is usually changed to that - though there is something lovely in keeping it as is - as if only dance, and song, could express what happened)

Not only lovely because Bottom is expressing the transformation wrought by his new desire through the medium of his old desire, fusing his old and news selves, but even more lovely because of this haunting phrase:

it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom

It hath no bottom: in this moment, Bottom is saying both that the dream was limitless and that he wasn't in it - his self was there and not there - he was purged of his mortal grossness and so became something limitless at the cost of his self.

Heady stuff, and dangerous to the playing of it; but the play's center of gravity is here, and all the choices we make in this production ripple out from it.

Then Bottom says:
Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

What, and who, can he possibly mean? Whose death? Thisby's? Hippolyta's? Or Titania's? If Thisby's, why does he say "latter end of a play" instead of "the play"? If Hippolyta, why is he imagining the death of the new Duchess?

If it is Titania, then Bottom's "methought I had" may mean more than just a pair of ass-ears, or as many Bottom's mime it, a bigger dick. "Methought I had" could mean Titania herself, and he may imagine singing it to her in this ballad called Bottom's dream, at her 'death', which is his waking.

In the course of a night, our Weaver has gone from an artist trapped in his head to an animal in love with his body to an airy spirit purged of his mortal grossness, and he is determined to tell that story the only way he knows how, through theatre. And yes, he is ridiculous, but the laughter of wonder and empathy is richer than the easy mocking laughter that so often attends the role. And if, with wonder and empathy, we go with him all the way through these transformations, than we are brought to the heart of a mystery that hath no bottom.
Read the full story

How does this entry relate to Flux's full production of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Titania, Queen of the Fairies - she seems such a limitless creation that staging her can only diminish her...but Shakespeare has cut a mortal hole in her immortal fabric that makes her journey one of the most deeply felt in the play.

That mortal hole lives in these lines:

But she being mortal, of that boy did die, And for her sake I do rear up her boy, And for her sake I will not part with him.

After all the poetic multisyllabic words of her Votresse memory, she ends with three monosyllabic lines that tear at the heart. Death, difficult for us to compass, must be inconceivable for an immortal being such as Titania. She has forever to mourn for her lost love (a love beautifully incarnated by Erin Browne's contribution to The Imagination Compact.)

Is it any wonder then that the first thing Titania would do upon the Votresse's death would be to make her son an immortal changeling? Is it any wonder than that the first thing Titania does upon falling in love with Bottom is to say:

And I will purge thee of the mortal grossness so, That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Titania has learned her lesson: if you truly love a mortal creature, you must make it immortal as soon as possible or your beloved will die on you.

There is something moving about a world where even the Gods cannot reverse death; and that powerlessness stands in contrast to the powers over death manifest in our November production of the Angel Eaters trilogy.

Viewed through this light, Titania's journey is essential to the play; perhaps second to only Bottom's in this ensemble story. It is her obsession with the loss of her Votresse that begins the conflict in the Fairy Land, and brings them to both to Athens; it Oberon's spiteful revenge that brings the comically grotesque world of the Mechanicals into union with the Fairy sublime; and it is that unlikely love affair that allows Titania to let go of both the changeling boy, and the grief that bound him to her.

In the First Folio, Titania is listed as "Queen" until the moment she wakes to fall in love with Bottom: thereafter, she will always be listed as "Titania"; a fascinating textual change that further emphasizes this transformation.

And though I doubt that Oberon and Titania's reconciliation at the end of the play is one of perfect accord (as Oberon's wishes); there is no doubt she has been renewed by her dalliance with the Ass; she is able to resume her place as equal partner to Oberon; and through the letting go of grief, the natural order resumes.

So threaded through all her soaring poetry is the simple human story of an inconsolable grief made whole through love; and the fact that this wholeness is brought about by a mean-spirited revenge and a ridiculous ass is one of Shakespeare's most moving ironies. Read the full story

This blog entry is meant to be a touchstone for Flux's upcoming production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This main entry will focus on the larger questions we are asking and risks we are taking in our production; within this entry, links will bring you (our intrepid reader) to the details. By sharing our process openly, our hope is to more deeply engage our audience as we wrestle with this subtly challenging play. (And if you are so moved, you can purchase tickets here)
So here we go...

Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream explores this classic through the prism of Bottom and Titania's sublimely comic and deeply unsettling union. Flux uses actor-driven magic to set a fairy world of limitless possibility against a mortal world fraught with change and loss. The transcendence of desire bridges these worlds, and the transformative nature of love leaves none unchanged. Join Flux Theatre Ensemble for a dream that hath no bottom. Read the full story