A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The spunky sixth-grader playing Hippolyta (Christina Manna) said, “Ooh, I can get fake blood,” as she and her fellow students at Sage Ridge School (grades 6-12) rehearsed Act 5 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students laughed as the director and drama teacher, Philip Levy, said, “No, we don’t need fake blood.”

The students, aged 12 through 15, were decked out in Western garb at a recent rehearsal. When those playing the laborers/actors came onstage to perform Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within the play, everybody laughed. David Adams (Nick Bottom/Pyramus), David Ingbar (Tom Snout/Wall) and Jake Lindemann (Thisbe/Francis Flute) in particular embodied the goofiness and innocence of some of Shakespeare’s most comedic characters. When Ingbar played Snout with a matter-of-fact backwoods Southern accent, it was clear he’ll have to really project when delivering lines inside the audience-filled Prim Theater at Nevada Museum of Art, March 5-7.

“Have you seen O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Ingbar asked. “I wanted to sound like the dumb guys from that movie because it’s fun to be an idiot.”

“This play has been a lot of hard work, but it’s been fun,” said Manna.

With a week until performance, the students were in fine shape, thanks to the articulate directing of Levy. If you laugh as much as the students laughed at one another, you’ll have stomach cramps by the play’s end.