Shakespeare “In the Park”

I think most people either love Shakespeare or hate Shakespeare.  I have never met anyone who is ambivalent about The Bard.  I first read “Romeo and Juliet” in middle school, but it wasn’t until I read “Hamlet” and then “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, both in high school, that I decided I was a Shakespeare lover.  When I allowed myself to be absorbed by the work I was able to discover a certain joy about the language.  If I concentrated and peeled back the layers of the unfamiliar “Old English” I found that there were clever jokes and amusing word play at work; for a young writer there was a real excitement in that discovery.

Every time I reread one of his plays I find something new that I didn’t see before, and it renews my excitement about Shakespeare all over again.  It reminds me of the show from the 1970s M*A*S*H (just go with me here).  When I was very young, my parents would watch M*A*S*H on television and I could not understand what they found so funny about the show; I found it to be not just boring, but completely confusing.  Why were people laughing at the jokes?  They didn’t even make sense!  Once I got older and watched M*A*S*H in reruns, I was able to appreciate the dialogue because I had grown up, learned more, and had more experiences of my own to which I could relate what the characters were talking about.  Reading Shakespeare is much the same way – the older I get, the more I appreciate what he has to say.  It might be that I have gone through more of the emotions he writes about, or that I am older and more patient with words, or it might be a little bit of both.

Starting Friday July 30 and running through August 8, the 36th Annual Houston Shakespeare Festival will be performing at Miller Outdoor Theater at Hermann Park.  They will put on a total of nine performances: five nights of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and four nights of “Much Ado About Nothing”.  Both plays are comedies, both delightful in their treatment of love and the artful misdirection of love, and I hope you will try to see a performance of each.  Shakespeare’s words were, of course, intended to be heard as dialogue and interpreted through performance, not simply read off of a page.  I promise, if you haven’t read Shakespeare lately, you’ll have a new appreciation for the way he crafts language when you see it come alive on the stage.

What: 36th Annual Houston Shakespeare Festival

Where: Miller Outdoor Theater in Hermann Park, 6000 Hermann Park. Dr. (map)

When: Performance schedule:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Friday, July 30th * 8:30 PM
• Sunday, August 1st * 8:30 PM
• Tuesday, August 3rd * 8:30 PM
• Thursday, August 5th * 8:30 PM
• Saturday, August 7th * 8:30 PM

Much Ado About Nothing

• Saturday, July 31st * 8:30 PM
• Wednesday, August 4th * 8:30 PM
• Friday, August 6th * 8:30 PM
• Sunday, August 8th * 8:30 PM

Tickets: Lawn seating is, as always, free and no tickets are necessary.  If you wish to secure seating in the covered seating area, visit the Miller Theater Box Office between 10:30 AM and 1 PM, one hour before performance time, or call 281-373-3386.

Additional information: No photography of performances is allowed, no glass containers are allowed.

Photo credit: SXC (1, 2)