You will be divided up into 4–6 person groups, each of which is being given responsibility for one act of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Before you meet as a group, each of you, individually, should select a very specific moment from your act that seems to call for decisive interpretation.When I say “very specific moment,” I’m talking about perhaps 10-12 lines of text, not an entire scene, or even a lengthy exchange.Take that moment you’ve selected, and for Tuesday’s class (the 28th 0f November), write about way it matters
to the play as a whole—in terms of character, motivation, theme,etc—and then sketch out how you would like to see it (in terms of gesture, voice, movement, set, music, lighting,etc.). Conclude by writing a final paragraph describing the effect that your vision of this moment would have on an important element of the play as a whole. This is basically a three-paragraph essay. I will be reading it, so it should be neat and proofread, but it doesn’t have to be a final-draft-level piece of work.

On Tuesday, you’ll be sharing your “cruxes” with the other members of your group, who decide as a collective what larger interpretive questions or issues seem to be most pivotal to your act as a whole. Sharing responsibility for constructing the presentation, work out a way to discuss your ideas with the class as a whole on Thursday. You should plan to discuss the larger interpretive questions you decide are key, and to do so in part by sharing highlights from various individual cruxes along the way. If you want to demonstrate your ideas by acting one of the cruxes, feel free—it’ll help us visualize things—but it’s not absolutely necessary. Plan for your presentation to take 15 minutes.