The Chelsea Standard
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Chelsea Area Players bring 'The Bard' to the stage
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: May 8, 2008
The Chelsea Area Players have been all about the local community ever since the seed for the organization was planted at a cast party attended by several alumni of Chelsea High School musicals.
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Many of these folks still are active in CAP to this day, and are active in giving back to the community.
The house that gave Jeff Daniels his first taste of the stage sponsors the Chelsea Fair Queen, awards scholarships to Chelsea High School seniors and is involved in producing or assisting various local fund-raisers, as well as running theater workshops for children and adults.
The tradition continues tonight and tomorrow at 7 p.m., as well as 2 p.m. Saturday, when William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" gets a modernized fantasy treatment by Artistic Director Ty Jacobs.
The performances will take place at the Washington Street Education Center Auditorium at 500 Washington Street.
Shakespeare's featured work is a romantic comedy that was created sometime in the 1590s. The tale of four Athenian lovers who set out on an adventure full of unexpected twists and turns is one of the most frequently produced plays across the world.
Jacobs' previous show was "Sleepy Hollow" last fall, which was a big hit for the Players and a choice that he considered as matching the theme of the coming winter.
His immediate choice was "something by Shakespeare" and his choice was further narrowed by the fact that his next production would be happening in the spring - perfect for a tale of nobility wandering through a fairy forest.
It also helped that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" had more roles for female actors than is typical for a Shakespeare work, Jacobs said.
"In those days women were not permitted to perform on stage, but (this play) was a bit different with quite a few strong roles for girls."
He says the idea for his take on "AMND" - as many in the cast and crew call it - was exposure to Shakespeare's work through another man's lens.
"My first real experience with anything of the Bard was seeing a film in the early 1990s called "Prospero's Books" by the avant-garde director Peter Greenaway," he said.
"I couldn't understand a single thing in the show due to the language and amazing imagery; and even now, after subsequent viewings, I still have no idea what 75 percent of the film is about."
"It wasn't until 1995 when viewing the film "Twelfth Night" that the language of Shakespeare really started to connect with Jacobs.
That film was also modernized for the recent Amanda Byrnes film, "She's The Man," which he considers a favorite.
Jacobs' take on "AMND" involves thematically distinguishing the three different groups interacting during the play, through dress, setting and music, which ranges from the classical styling of Felix Mendelssohn to the European dance beats of contemporary techno duo Daft Punk.
The three groups - Societals, Mechanicals and Supernaturals - act very differently on stage as well, which should lead to entertaining interplays between the divergent worlds that each comes from.
The cast numbers nearly 50, not counting the crew, making Ty Jacobs' production of "AMND" one of the players' largest youth productions to date.
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