THE DAILY NEWS - JUNE 2003
BY SHAUNE MacKINLAY

It's dress-rehearsal day at a Bedford private school. After nearly six weeks of memorizing lines, learning how to act, and constructing stage sets, the students are ready to take on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

And they're only in Grade 2.

Assembled in their classroom at Bedford Academy, the actors have forsaken their shirts, navy ties and tartan dresses for colourful costumes dutifully sewn by their mothers or, as one kid boasts, purchased from the internet.

Some parents have snuck away from work to watch the performance. A few grandparents and an entire Primary class also wait for the curtains to open.

The students gamely act out the convoluted comedy, the front of their classroom their stage; the hallway, the wings. Soon they are besotted lovers, scheming fairies, and victims of pranks played by the sprite, Puck, played by Laura Polak.

Puck uses his magic to give Colin Hall's Nick Bottom a donkey head, the long ears made of brown paper. When the spell is lifted, Bottom returns to a role in a play within the play, acting out his own death.

"I'm dying. I'm dying. My pulse is ebbing. I'm dead," he says as he falls to the floor, a plastic sword wedged at his side.

The only forgotten lines are teacher Lisa Devereaux's. She is filling in as Hermia, a girl who refuses to marry the man her father has chosen, and needs a gentle prompting from a young cast member when words escape her.

These kids will know the Bard well before they graduate to junior high. Next door to the Grade 2 production, a Grade 3 class is rehearsing The Tempest while the Grade 4 kids are wrapped up in Romeo and Juliet.

"It opens up a whole new world to them, it really does," says Devereaux. "It's almost like they become friends with these characters."

While Shakespeare is challenging even for an adult audience, these kids benefit from special versions of his plays written in rhyming couplets with modern language by Stratford, Ont., teacher Lois Burdett.

After 45 minutes, Puck's mischief-making is done, Nick Bottom is no longer a donkey, and everyone has found their true love. The play draws to a close with narrator Jenna Kyle's words:

"Were these fancies what they seem?

Or was it all a midsummer night's dream?"

The performers take a bow, met by the proud clapping of an audience that rises to a standing ovation.

Their teacher is positively spellbound.

"They were unreal."



« RETURN TO Bedford Academy IN THE NEWS INDEX