The Milford Arts Council’s Eastbound Theatre is proud to announce a special outdoor summer production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The performance will be given one weekend only, August 11, 12, and 13, in Milford’s picturesque Eisenhower Park, a perfect venue for the bard’s
laugh-out-loud comedy which takes its characters and the audience on a romp through a magical forest. The production will be co-directed by EBT veteran and Chairperson Nancy A. Herman and New York-to-Milford newcomer James Rightmyer.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved works. Filled with magic humor, and passion, the story is playfully amusing while also addressing concerns that are timely and important. The primary theme addresses both the silliness and the seriousness of love, but other themes include questions of appearance vs reality and order vs chaos – all timeless concerns that remain relevant today. But most importantly the play is filled with gorgeous poetry. The language of AMSND is enchanting and evocative, while at the same time being easily accessible to even the most Shakespeare-shy listener or viewer.
The MAC’s Eastbound Theatre will be holding auditions for A Midsummer Night’s Dream on May 16 & 17 starting at 7:00 p.m. at the MAC, 40 Railroad Ave S, Milford, CT.
Actors are invited to bring headshots and resumes, if you have them, but are welcome to audition without them. Additionally, we are inviting actors to come prepared to perform your favorite Shakespearian monologue, if you have one. If you do not, feel free to select and prepare one from the sides given below.
The production will rehearse roughly three evenings a week starting on June 12.
If you are interested in auditioning but cannot attend either session, please contact the directors and they will try to make other arrangements with you.
Please note, the ages and the gender assignments listed below are meant as a guide. All gender identities and ages are encouraged to apply for any interested roles. Actors of the global majority, performers with disabilities, trans actors, and gender nonconforming actors strongly encouraged to submit, choosing the roles they are most comfortable playing. We are seeking a diverse cast, and all roles are open to actors of any race, ethnicity, or gender, and to actors with disabilities.
Theseus/Oberon: 30-50. This track will double the King of Athens and the King of the Faeries. High status, commanding presence, strong textwork.
Titania/Hippolyta: 30-50. This track doubles as the new warrior-queen of Athens and the Queen of the Faeries. High status, commanding presence. Singing/instrumental ability a plus
Egeus: 40-60. Lord in the Athenian court, staunch conservative fuddy-duddy.
Puck: 20-60. Trickster of the faeries, mischievous sense of humor and troublemakers. Physical ability is a plus. Track may double with Egeus.
Helena: 18-30. Lovestruck young woman, desperate for Demetrius’ attention. Plucky and determined. (Ideally taller than Hermia)
Hermia: 18-30. Young lover, coupled with Lysander, ingenue. (Ideally shorter than Helena) Lysander: 18-30. Young lover, coupled with Hermia. Bad boy with a heart of gold.
Demetrius: 18-30. Young lover, pursuing Hermia and escaping Helena. Straight-laced and rigid. By the end of the play softens for Helena.
Nick Bottom: 25-50. Mechanical, aspiring actor and dreamer. Comic lead – physical comedy a plus, singing/instrumental ability a plus.
Peter Quince: 25-60. Mechanical, desperate to put on a great show. Stage manager of the amateur theater group. Fussy. Singing/instrumental ability a plus
Francis Flute: 16-25. Mechanical, young, aspiring actor. Plays Thisbe in the play within the play. Ideally can make the appearance of going through adolescence. Singing/instrumental ability a plus
Tom Snout: 20-40. Mechanical, enthusiastic amateur actor. Plays Wall in the play within the play. Singing/instrumental ability a plus
Robin Starveling: 20-40. Mechanical, amateur actor that gets stage fight. Plays Moon in the play within the play. Singing/instrumental ability is a plus.
1st Faerie: 16-25. Faerie second of Hippolyta. Physical ability, singing/instrumental ability a plus.
Moth/Peaseblossom/Mustardseed: Faerie attendants of Hippolyta. Physical and musical ability are both a plus.
HELENA
Call you me fair? that fair again unsay..
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart
HELENA
How happy some o'er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind: Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjured every where: For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne, He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
PUCK
My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower, While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, Were met together to rehearse a play
Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day. The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort, Who Pyramus presented, in their sport Forsook his scene and enter'd in a brake When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass's nole I fixed on his head:
Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
When they him spy, away his fellows fly; And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls; He murder cries and help from Athens calls. I led them on in this distracted fear,
And left sweet Pyramus translated there: When in that moment, so it came to pass, Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.
OBERON
That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once: The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
BOTTOM
[Awaking] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next is, 'Most fair Pyramus.' Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. 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. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad 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: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
TITANIA
Then I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest Steppe of India?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
COBWEB
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: Are not you he?
LYSANDER
A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child: From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee; And to that place the sharp Athenian law Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then, Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night; And in the wood, a league without the town, Where I did meet thee once with Helena, There will I stay for thee.
LYSANDER
I am, my lord, as well derived as he,
As well possess'd; my love is more than his; My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd, If not with vantage, as Demetrius';
And, which is more than all these boasts can be, I am beloved of beauteous Hermia:
Why should not I then prosecute my right? Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena, And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,
Upon this spotted and inconstant man.
HERMIA
My good Lysander!
I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow, By his best arrow with the golden head, By the simplicity of Venus' doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, When the false Troyan under sail was seen, By all the vows that ever men have broke, In number more than ever women spoke, In that same place thou hast appointed me, To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.
DEMETRIUS
O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! That pure congealed white, high Taurus snow, Fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow When thou hold'st up thy hand: O, let me kiss This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none: If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone. My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn'd, And now to Helen is it home return'd, There to remain. Look, where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.
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