One of my favorite bits of theatrical interpretation ever is from a high school-university collaboration I participated in of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare. I was part of the university group, and we were helping the high schoolers for some reason I can't actually remember, it might have been an AP course.
Anyway, our job was to abridge and perform the play with our Very Small Cast. And the sticking point came in that I had always desperately wanted to play Puck, but one of the high school kids also wanted to play Puck.
The expected thing to do would be for one of us to just play a different part.
What we actually did was just go, "Wait. What- what if- what if... what if Two Pucks?"
And boom, just like that, one of the key conceits of our rendition of the play is that there were two Pucks; me, the Classic Puck as typically seen in the play, and Narrator Puck, who acted as the play's omniscient narrator to cover the bits of play we couldn't fit in, with both of us wearing similar 'costumes'* and hairstyles to signal we were the same person.
Which, on its own? Fine and dandy, a fun way to solve two issues while enriching the play. Only, the thing is?
We didn't just have two Pucks.
Because, at the part of the play where Oberon gets angry at Puck for getting a little too enthusiastic with the love potion, and I was cowering with an appropriately obsequious, "Believe me, King of Shadows, I mistook-!", Oberon cut me off mid-line with a cross, "Not you, you!"
And emphatically broke the fourth wall to point at Narrator Puck.
On the grounds that they were the one telling the story in the first place, therefore they were the one who was responsible for all this mess, and therefore they were now fired from the role of narrator and Oberon himself was going to take over.
Narrator Puck: But then who's going to be Oberon?!
And one of the other high school guys, who has been posing as a stage hand this whole time, even wearing proper stage blacks in spite of the fact that we in a classroom, popped up with a bright, "Oh, I'll do it; I love acting!"
Then everyone got to their new places, Replacement Oberon finished his lines and told me (Classic Puck) to go fix all this with the love potion cure, and I got a moment on stage to be visibly confused about everything that had just happened.
And for the rest of the play, Classic Oberon (still in character) was the narrator, and Replacement Oberon did the rest of Oberon's parts.
It was wonderful, and will forever be my favorite production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
*Quotes because our costume budget was 'a couple generalized pieces the high school had heavily supplemented by the fact that I, personally, dress like I just escaped a Renaissance Faire half the time and have a hat collection, and I was willing to share.'
kianamaiart
2087
gummygunk
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