With a “very special place” in her heart for the show, senior Hadley Julca student-directed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare as part of California Lutheran University’s Theatre and Dance Department’s Mainstage Production last weekend.
“‘Midsummer’ is one of my favorite plays, it was my first Shakespeare play when I was eight,” Julca said.
The production, Julca said, was over a year and a half in the making. Julca said the play has grown bigger than she ever expected, involving students from various programs all across Cal Lutheran’s campus.
“It’s a bunch of different people coming together to create a piece of living, breathing art. We’re building the world that we all enter in, and that we invite the audience to enter into, and just to see that world come to life, … it’s really magical,” Julca said.
Members of the Visual Arts department have aided in designing, building and painting sets, as well as working on props, Julca said. Student composers also wrote the soundtrack for the play, which she said is “almost a character in itself.” Additionally, two “really eager and ambitious” first-year students were featured, Julca said, who have given “life to music through dance.”
Julca said she grew up going to Kingsmen Shakespeare Company productions on campus, and began interning with the group even before she committed to Cal Lutheran. She said she was lucky enough to learn from Brett Elliott, one of the directors of Kingsmen Shakespeare, and she attributed much of what she knows to Elliott.
Julca said she will also be working on another version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” produced by Kingsmen Shakespeare over the summer, and it’ll be an interesting transition from director back to an actor.
Christine Cummings, assistant professor and faculty mentor of Cal Lutheran’s Mainstage Productions, said Julca’s vision for the play has been an “enormous undertaking.” Cummings said Shakespeare is challenging, even for professional directors, but she is incredibly proud of Julca for rising to the occasion.
“Hadley is special,” Cummings said. “[She] has a love of Shakespeare that rivals my own, and so she was uniquely perfect for this particular show.”
Cummings said her goal is to support student-directors in their productions. She said it’s almost like an advanced directing class, and she wants students to learn as much as they possibly can about directing, working with actors and designers, and the overall collaborative nature of theater.
“Shakespeare can feel to a modern audience like a foreign language, and so you need to make sure that the storytelling is clear. Not even in terms of how the actors understand the language, which is important, but also in the physical storytelling in how you actionally stage it,” Cummings said. “All of those things will assist in making sure the audience understands the story throughout.”
Junior Fiona Martin played Helena, one of the main female characters of the play. Martin said she has been performing Shakespeare since she was 14, starting with monologues from various Shakespearean plays and eventually acting in smaller roles. She said she also competed in Shakespeare competitions in high school.
“I always enjoyed [Helena],” Martin said. “She’s like, very vivacious and she’s very spunky. She doesn’t play like a tragic lead, which is so common within Shakespeare.”
Martin said this is one of the first roles she’s portrayed a young woman around her own age, as she is typically cast in roles of older women or men. Martin said Helena is a relatable character who is inspiring in her own way.
“It’s so easy to, like, play her as a victim, especially in the beginning, because she has this whole monologue talking about, like, how Demetrius was in love with her and then he left her,” Martin said. “My challenge has really been, like, just veer away from playing her as a victim and really just like, embrace her.”
Cummings said rehearsals for “Midsummer” ran four to five days a week for around 10 weeks. She said the actors and assistants have shown their passion and drive repeatedly through the entire process.
Cummings said the cast’s dedication and commitment has been nothing short of inspiring.
“It means everything,” Julca said. “I came here to Cal Lutheran because of a lot of really amazing directors and a lot of incredible mentor figures. For me to kind of end my time here by directing, by being in the driver’s seat as it were, the director’s chair, it’s really incredible.”
