A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Valentine Pornographic?

Please define "Pornographic"...

I heard they put a huge vagina on the stage and the Valentine forced them to clean up the language and scenery and costumes for the highschool students who came and saw the performance but the regular folks will get full strength.

Just a bunch of perverts. You couldn't pay me to watch that garbage.

ah, the timeless argument about what is art and what is pornography. Americans are so uptight with nudity and sexuality.

BTW, the sign that the tanning salon put up on Laskey is no worse than the one being protested at the Westwood.

never seen a vagina before? mabey you should go then

When I was getting my MA, the school I was going to had a performance of the Vagina Monolouges coming up one semester. Of course, for some reason this "performance" gets every female on campus all worked up..."empowering", "enlightening", blah blah blah.

To publicize the upcoming performance, one of the campus women's groups thought it would be eye-catching (and it was) to create a 7 foot tall, anatomically-correct, paper-mache vagina and place it in the student center. During the day, they'd have volunteers selling tickets in front of this thing. At night, hordes of frat guys and others making many, many obscene pictures. All in the name of feminism of course....

I always wondered if they paraded donors through the student center to see the "education" the kids were getting. "On the right, our campus bookstore with adjacent study areas; next to that, our student council chambers where important decisions are made....on your left, 7 foot tall vagina. Please give us a million dollars."

Incidentally, for those who have never seen the vagina couch for sale on Craigslist, now's your chance...

Shakespeare is garbage? Or did they do some sort of modern adaptation that bears little resemblance to the original work?

Garbage?

Me? I like vaginas. Wouldn't offend me at all.

Big fan of vagina but things like this where you OVER stress it by pushing it in people's faces is just as bad as repressing it.

It's just the human body, been around for millions of years and will be here long after we are gone. A big deal one way or the other is just silly.

I'm not debating personal taste, or peoples' rights to say, perform, or do what they want, or to watch anything. I just had no idea this is what I was paying money for nor did I ever imagine someone would do that to Shakespeare and then market it without warning me....I feel cheated, and it is not something I personally want to see.

Screw that theater, let's all go to the westwood for a show. No hidden agendas there. Straight porn.

People will bitch about anything.

It is no big deal. If you have seen one before it won't matter. If you haven't you won't know what it is.

It got great reviews.

http://midwesttheatre.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/midsummer-nights-dream-a-review-by-edmund-b-lingan/

Bottom May Have Been Dreaming but Real Ass-umptions Make Us All Look Like Donkeys

As an informed audience member and professional theatre artist who saw the production, I was very curious to hear how some rumors (based solely on hearsay—no one had yet seen the offending elements) led to the censorship of a splendid contemporary interpretation of a classic play that was much less racey than what you might see on television or MTV.

Apart from the fact that it was given a standing ovation by high school audiences (proof that theatre can be—and has to be relevant to people of all ages and from all backgrounds) this production was fun, witty, theatrical and demonstrated a profound understanding of Shakespeare. The so-called “vagina” was in fact an elegant chair that looked like a beautiful flower. The fact that other elements were eliminated before they were even built, is a demonstration that gossip can lead to destructive assumptions.

In addition to rumors being based entirely on hearsay, they were also a product of a widespread lack of education. So-called “theatre professionals” were up in arms when they heard a rap in which the word “cock” was featured. These “professionals” (who clearly had never read Shakespeare) did not know that those words were the playwright’s own, and that the word cock in fact means rooster—of course the word has a double entendre—A device Shakespeare frequently used and which the director very skillfully employed in his own production. All sexual elements were stylized, comical and were in homage of the script—there was nothing gratuitous or licentious at all.

Ultimately the misunderstanding reminds me of the old adage: When you assume things, you make an—donkey (to avoid using a synonym often used by Shakespeare that may offend the same public that censored the production!) out of you and me.

It was not as bad as intended. It was cleaned up. I for one am sick of the oversexualization of this generation. Shakespeare understood the beauty of the subtlety and mystery of sex and love. Something that is lost on this generation where pictures of big vagina couches are considered appropriate.

Oversexualization? Umm, the US has been stuck in the puritan stone ages when you compare us to the rest of the contemporary world. Kids are afraid and embarrassed of their own bodies. People see a breast or bare bum on TV and get all worked up. I'm sorry, get over it. I would hate to see how someone with this sheltered point of view would do visiting Europe or other countries that don't shame the human body.

To each their own. I don't begrudge anyone their values. They should have been more upfront about what they intended though. So folks he didn't want that sort of thing could avoid it.

Anybody else think of this old Onion article: Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Place Shakespeare Intended

As someone who has lived in several cities in Europe and traveled around the world, I agree that the American attitude towards the body is repressed. I am always shocked how American children are exposed to extreme violence, but the slightest hint of nudity or sexuality (even in a tasteful and artistic way) is completely censored. In Europe it is the opposite: violence on TV is censored, but sexuality (that is not gratuitous) is considered okay. Perhaps it is the fact that their piazzas are overflowing with nude statues by great Renaissance artists that allow them to have a much more free attitude. The Europeans I know, incidentally, also seem to have a much more balanced attitude in their relationships with one another--and studies have proven that the United States has one of the highest ratios of violent crime (more info of which, can be found in "The Economist") As Marlene Dietrich once said "In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact".

Incidentally, I do know what the original production was going to be, and there was nothing gratuitous or licentious about it. The so-called sexual moments were farcical, funny and real--and this is Shakespeare's great strength: His ability to understand and reveal every level of human existence, from the base, to the bawdy to the most transcendent. In fact, if you read Eric Partridge's "Shakespeare's Bawdy", or Harold Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Body" you will gain a deeper understanding of the true complexity of Shakespeare's oeuvre. To insist on imposing subjective social restrictions on his work and to minimize his exploration of love to only the "subtle and mysterious" is to misunderstand the bigger, universal scope of his work. Sexual awakening is more than just mysterious and subtle, it is also powerful, all encompassing, passionate and sometimes obsessive. If we forget that with age, we lose the ability to communicate to the younger generation.