Each May, the third-year drama students present a Shakespeare play as their last project of the school year, which also marks their first appearance in the Drama Theater. This year, Group 33 will present one of the Bard's most popular comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream.

A costume sketch by Miranda Hoffman for the character Titania in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This annual third-year project is, in fact, the culmination of three years of intense study of Shakespeare and text training. Beginning with their first project at Juilliard, called "The Discovery Project," drama students grapple with Shakespeare's language and layers of meaning. In their second year, they also perform a Shakespeare play and take a text class to hone their understanding and ability to speak verse. Finally, in the third year, students perform and study Shakespeare in their acting class with Drama Division head Michael Kahn (who is also the director of Washington's Shakespeare Theatre). Combined with their performance in the Drama Theater, the final months of their third year are devoted almost entirely to England's most renowned playwright.

This production marks a milestone for director Alex Correia: With Midsummer Night's Dream, Alex will have completed Juilliard's three-year Artist Diploma Program for Theater Directors, under the supervision of Andrei Belgrader. Incidentally, Alex's first project at Juilliard was a selection from A Midsummer Night's Dream presented during the 2000-01 school year.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a favorite of both audiences and theater professionals. It is one of Shakespeare's funniest and most raucous comedies, featuring dueling lovers, fairies, and blue-collar workers putting on a play. The play includes high and low comedy, extreme physicality, verbal silliness, and elegant verse. Actors relish the opportunity to delve into both the beauty of the Bard's poetry and the hilarity of his prose.

One main source of humor is the presence of the "rude mechanicals." These Athenian workmen, such as tailors and weavers, decide to present a play for Duke Theseus's wedding day (which occurs at the end of the play). Their utter seriousness and devotion to The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe is matched by their complete ignorance about acting and theater productions. Envisioned in this production as clowns, in the spirit of commedia dell'arte figures, they devise outrageous and sweet solutions to every obstacle thrown in their way.

A costume sketch by Miranda Hoffman for Philostrate in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Another well-beloved group are the four lovers, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander. Hermia flees to the woods of Athens with her love Lysander to escape an arranged marriage to Demetrius. Helena, who is Hermia's best friend, is in love with Demetrius and tells him of Hermia's plan. Demetrius (pursued by Helena) follows Hermia and Lysander into the woods. The magic juice of a flower spread on the men's eyes further complicates the plot, as both men then instantly fall in love with Helena and attempt to woo her (while she is convinced this is a game to mock her). Former lovers, best friends, and rivals are all suddenly at odds, and the fight within the woods soon devolves into name-calling and threats of scratching out each other's eyes.

The fairies are also perennial audience favorites. They are led by King Oberon and Queen Titania, who rule over the fairy world and hold great sway over nature. Yet, despite their dignity and power, they are not above squabbling. Titania and Oberon begin the play by quarreling over a changeling child whom Titania possesses and Oberon desires. In order to gain the child, Oberon puts Titania under a love spell that will distract her from the child. This ends disastrously (and comically), when the fairy queen falls in love with Bottom, one of the stars of Pyramus and Thisbe.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Drama Theater Tuesday-Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday, May 13-14 and 17-18, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

Before Alex Correia began work on the production, Michael Kahn posed the question to him: "Is this play a nightmare or a dream?" Alex's answer--a dream--informed everything that was to come. For Correia, the heart of the play became the characters' obsessions. Each character has something or someone who overpowers them. The lovers are obsessed with each other; the mechanicals are obsessed with their play; Titania and Oberon are obsessed with each other and the changeling child. Correia became interested in discovering what lengths people will go to for their love and what they will endure for their desires.

The character of Helena is a great illustration of obsession. She is entirely devoted to Demetrius, although he spurns her at every opportunity. Somehow his cruelty only feeds her love and she cries, "I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,/The more you beat me, I will fawn on you." Correia wanted to explore why people gravitate toward each other and embrace the pain associated with unrequited love.

Another aspect of the director's vision is the passion and sensuality of this dream, the heat of love and desire that courses throughout the play and transforms those it touches. Titania, under the love potion, falls in love with Bottom, who has been transformed into an ass by the fairies. Poor, bewildered Bottom is sucked into the mysterious and mystical fairy world; no more the simple weaver, he now has legions of fairies waiting on him hand and foot as well as the love of a fairy queen. Titania, under the spell, awakes to new-found passion and desire for the strange creature. Both are changed by their love, even when the dream is over and they are separated. Bottom exclaims, "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart report, what my dream was."

The one character who remains free from the constraints of passion or obsession is the fairy Puck. As conceived by Correia, Puck is an androgynous and mysterious figure who also possesses a childlike quality. Corralled into performing tasks by his master Oberon, Puck would rather be causing mischief or killing ants.

The Juilliard actors seek to retain that same sense of play and mischief as they approach their parts. As the final weeks of school draw to a close, Group 33 looks toward Shakespeare's magic to inspire and transform them from simple actors into magical, wonderful creatures. As the mechanicals announce before Pyramus and Thisbe, "If we offend, it is with our good will./That you should think, we come not to offend,/But with good will. To show our simple skill,/That is the true beginning of our end."

Gillian Jacobs, a third-year drama student, will play the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream.