Arts and Entertainment | Theater

KCST’s ambition hath no Bottom: Spectator previews “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

By Auden Barbour / Staff Photographer
“I really really wanted to direct a comedy with KCST; that was my goal,” director Ferrante said. “And so I was like, looking through them, and I came across Midsummer, and like literally there's some notes on my phone at like 5:30 in the morning where I was like, ‘Oh my god, like, Athens is an extremely patriarchal state, and this forest is this primordial beautiful space of love and chaos,’ basically. And I just, like, had these two elements in my head, and this dichotomy between these two places, and I just kind of kept running with it.”
By Sarah Robertson • November 21, 2019 at 7:58 AM

Photo by Auden Barbour / Staff Photographer

“I learned that I really wanted to do Midsummer once I got to this dichotomy space,” Ferrante said. “And I was like, I want to make a show about overcoming this rigid and patriarchal space and moving into this free flowing space of the forest, and I want to show that that space is possible.”

Photo by Auden Barbour / Staff Photographer

“I think, with all things, we could have done better in some areas, but in casting, it wasn’t an afterthought to like, ‘And let’s make sure it’s diverse, guys.’ We put a lot of energy into making sure it was, like, diverse racially, and especially introducing people to KCST who aren’t the same actors cycled over and over,” Rangell-Onwuegbuzia said. “Which was, I think, also different from the norm with costume design, because a lot of costume designers come on after the process has started, but because we started with it, we were able to contribute that element of it to the casting, and like, ‘Okay, what does it look like, not just conceptually, but literally; how do they look side by side, and what message is that sending?’”

Photo by Michael Cao / Columbia Daily Spectator

“We currently live in a very rigid system that embraces binaries without nuance and demands that women don’t listen to their desire,” Ferrante said. “And obviously you're not going to be put to death for not marrying who you want, but also like couldn’t you be, you know.”