A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the perfect play. Fight me on it.
Sure it’s 430 years old, sexist and terribly problematic - a tyrant couple fight over a stolen baby, a girl's father threatens to kill her if she doesn’t marry his chosen match, gremlins prank lovers to partner swap and torture each other, craftsmen are mocked for their earnestness - Really? Really Mr. Shakespeare? So rude!
BUT, there’s also a fairie band, punk rock elves, an Amazon Queen and a five act comedy structure that leads us directly to happily ever after and lots of good lovin’. MidSummer is as classic as classic can be. Honestly when you have no budget, and lots of heart, it’s the perfect play. A perfect play to celebrate a very big Birthday B’DAT Birthday!
I cannot think of a kinder, funnier, lovelier, humbler, more playful group of young people with which to celebrate this milestone. I’m so proud of everything it took to earn our stripes. Every cafeteria rehearsal at West 61st Street. Every growing pain of moving to a new space. Every change in personnel. Every new class of students making their way through the curriculum with passion and curiosity. Every stage debut. Every first ATA class. Every thesis. Every graduation.
When this graduating class appeared they were oh so tiny and barely cracking out of quarantine. I met Kim first, on a summer experience visiting theater sites in the city before school started. Then Solar and Seven, little faces with wide eyes blinking in the zoom choir. Then Alice and Zikra when we took things to the park. Radio plays, masks, trying to figure out how to do this theater thing again when we were finally allowed to be in the same room. It took two solid years and several projects to get our skills and community to our usual eager and thriving state of being, but B’DAT is hanging on by a thread. Yup. School budgets were slashed. But for the record B’DAT has NEVER requested money directly from the school budget, nor have we ever taken any. For 20 years B’DAT has self-propagated our work by paying our own production expenses while the PTA covered the cost of the teaching artists essential to our programming. It is heartbreaking that the PTA can no longer meet that need. We understand. We do. But that doesn’t mean it’s not devastating. 68% of the need means something has to go. It means a production, or the choir, or the lighting and the sound engineering has to go. How do you choose?
