A Post Summer Break's Dream

Reflective Paragraph: Why choose this setting and what do you want us to understand from character and speech?

We chose a high school setting because of the prominent presence of cliques and hierarchies in stereotypical high schools that are also visible in the play. To capture how the rude mechanicals are mocked and looked down upon, we cast them as members of a club for the popular, although stigmatized, board game Dungeons and Dragons. Because Titania and Oberon are the queen and king of the fairies they were cast as the top members of the high school "food chain": the student-athletes. We specifically made Titania a figure skater because the grace and elegance required for the sport would cause her to resemble a “fairy” on ice. Oberon and Puck becoming hockey players was a simple play on the sport's use of hockey pucks. We wanted to show how Shakespeare’s work uses tropes, such as misunderstandings in love and an inverted Cinderella love story, that are still widely-known and enjoyed by contemporary audiences.

• D&D: Campaign: The campaign is an alternate end to the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe. The goal of the role-play adventure is to try and get away from their hometown (as they aim to elope).

• One of the dorks gets too into character and roars out loud. Snout is concerned that the school will shut the club down/ they’re gonna get complaints/ written up for being too loud or ‘dangerous’. They come with an excuse about how D&D is just a role-playing game just in case they get written up by a teacher because of noise complaints. Pete continues assigning roles: wall, Pyramus, Thisbe, lion, etc.

• Puck, having just gotten out of detention, sees Bottom heading to the restroom and thinks it would be funny to trap him in the mascot head (donkey head). It fits perfectly with Oberon’s plan anyway. Puck goes to the D&D Club and chases away everyone while Bottom is in the restroom. He goes and gets the head, puts superglue in it, and hides outside the bathroom door. When Bottom leaves the bathroom, Puck comes up from behind, sticks the head on him.

• Bottom doesn’t know what’s on his head or who did it to him, but he tries to get it off. After realizing that he can’t get the head off, he thinks that he should ask his friends for help. He returns to an empty closet and laments about his friend ditching him since he does not realize that Puck chased them out.

• Bottom is walking around trying to figure out what to do about whatever’s on his head. He cleans up after his friends and tries to find them. After that doesn’t work, he stumbles about trying to figure out how to get back to his house but ends up incredibly lost instead. Because his eyesight isn’t great due to the mascot head and his phone is almost dead, he gets lost and stumbles across a house party.

• Bottom is singing “City of Stars” to calm himself down when he stumbles across Tiffany who has been drugged by Bryan. She is passed out on the lawn and wakes up when she hears Bottom singing. Tiffany, being incredibly intoxicated, sees Bottom, hallucinates that he’s Ryan Gosling, and becomes totally smitten. Bottom decides to goes with it since a popular girl has never paid attention to him like this before. Tiffany has her minions bring him drinks and snacks (edibles)

• Meanwhile, Puck arrives at the party and tells Bryan what he did to Bottom. Bryan brags back that he went through with his plan and spiked Tiffany’s drink with shrooms. He sees Tiffany flirting with Bottom and happy to hear that his ex doing something so stupid and laughs. He hopes her reputation will be destroyed.