When I was 15, my all-girl Catholic high school announced an upcoming performance by a traveling Shakespeare Theater Company, and attendance would be mandatory. In response, many of my classmates audibly groaned in disgust. I, on the other hand, was intrigued. Like most of my fellow working-class peers, I had never seen a live Shakespeare play; but Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet had left me breathless and eager to explore more of The Bard's work.
I was equally curious to see how this acting troupe would cope with 400 rowdy and somewhat hostile teenage girls. My classmates poured into the theater. Some reeked of forbidden cigarettes. Others sauntered past in alarmingly short school uniform skirts. F’ing Shakespeare, they muttered.
The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream. At first, the audience sat in sullen silence, but then the rude, mechanical characters burst onto the stage, slapsticking their way through that scene like a loquacious brood of Buster Keaton's and Charlie Chaplin's. That was when the laughter began. Occasional at first, but eventually crescendoing into howls of appreciation from the teenage mob. The delight continued as Titania, Queen of the fairies, fawned and cooed over the unwitting Bottom character with his newly acquired asses head. Best of all, the sexual double entendres left all 400 of us doubled over and falling out of our seats.
That astonishing experience was part of my inspiration to major in English and minor in theater. As an undergraduate, I also longed to perform in a Shakespeare play, but I had no interest in portraying The Bard's towering protagonists. Rather, my heart was set on playing bottom the clueless, rude mechanical with the asses head in A Midsummer Night's Dream. And who could resist the temptation to invite friends and family to the play with this casual request: Please come see my Bottom.
I'm Anna Evans, and that's my perspective.
