By Greta Klassen with extra pics by Amy and Doug
On Monday night our entire class turned into “groundlings” at Shakespeare’s Globe for a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the perfect event to celebrate Doug’s birthday!
There are pros and cons of getting a groundling ticket. The pros: the tickets are only £5, and you can get up close and personal with the actors. The cons: you have to stand during the entire show, and if you want a good spot, you have to arrive at the venue very early.
The Globe theater, situated on the southern bank of the River Thames, is an open air theater designed by Sam Wanamaker to be a replica of Shakespeare’s original Globe, which unfortunately burned down in 1613 after gunpowder was used in a performance of Henry VIII and caught the roof on fire. The new Globe was opened in 1997 and is the only building in London that is still allowed to have a thatched roof, despite the fire risk.
In Shakespeare’s day, up to a thousand groundlings would have been standing on the dirt floor, passing a bucket around for bathroom purposes and making a ruckus, while the higher class audience members sat on the balcony, separated from the riff raff. Today, only 700 people are allowed to stand in the ground floor, and no bucket is passed around; but those who are able to spend more on a ticket still sit in the balcony levels, surely pitying us groundlings.
Many GC students arrived to stand in the groundling queue (read: line) as early as 6pm, an hour and a half before the show begin. Once we were finally let in, we claimed the spots right on the front edge of the stage, so close that we could rest our arms on it.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies, known especially for the character Puck, the mischievous fairy who works for the Fairy King, Oberon. Like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, the play’s central conflict revolves around couples getting mixed up, split apart, and then put back together. In this play however, magic plays a key role, with the fairies using magical flowers on peoples eyes to make them fall in love with the first person they see upon waking up. In addition to the four romantic pairs and Puck, there is an aspiring troupe of actors who rehearse a play within the play, one of Shakespeare’s favorite plot devices. This hilarious mini-play wraps up the actual play, with characters straight out of a middle school-level production, like the Wall and the Moon.
It’s worth mentioning that two actors weren’t able to perform for unknown reasons, and two other actors filled in for them, reading off of scripts. Both were so phenomenal it was hard to imagine anyone else in their roles, and it didn’t take away from the experience at all.
The entire show was hilarious, and we found that the standing wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be. As we poured out of the theater, many people said it was the best show yet. It seems like there there are benefits to being a groundling!
