Illinois Shakespeare Festival (ISF) Dramaturg Kee-Yoon Nahm spoke with director Kim McKean about the Festival’s upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kee-Yoon Nahm (KYN): This is your first season with ISF. I want to start by welcoming you to the Festival!
Kim McKean (KM): Thank you. This opportunity to direct at the Festival is special for me because I am originally from Bloomington-Normal. As a young kid, ISF was my introduction to Shakespeare. I still remember a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I saw in 1993 that was very formative for me. I fell in love with the language and Shakespeare really cracked open imagination and world-building for me. When Shakespeare is done well, you as the audience member can feel actively involved in the story. That was my experience from going to the Festival as a kid. We tried to go to Ewing every summer as a family event, where we would picnic. So, it is special for me to have the opportunity to come back and be part of the artistic team.
KYN: It must be wonderful to be back at a theatre that had such an impact on you as a child.
KM: I even got married at Ewing, so there is magic in the air.
KYN: Speaking of that, many of our readers may not know that you are married to Greg Beam, who played Macbeth in last year’s season. Since you are both theatre artists, I am curious how you met.
KM: Greg and I met doing a play in Chicago, although he is not from here originally. But in many ways returning to the Midwest is a homecoming for us as a couple. We have been back for two years now, with me teaching at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Greg teaching at Illinois State University. It has always been a goal of mine to connect with ISF to talk about collaborating. But we had decided to take it slow last year because we were still getting settled. Then, Greg got a call from John Stark, the previous artistic director, asking if he would like to be in Macbeth to fill in for one of the actors. It was not how we thought we were going to spend last summer, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and such a wonderful experience for Greg. I went to see the show on opening night and again on closing night last year, and it was great to see how it evolved during the run. And then, at the end of last season, I told Robert Quinlan that if he is looking for directors for next year, I would love to put my name in.
KYN: Greg was truly a godsend, jumping into the production on such short notice. It was also great seeing a different side of Greg, whom I only knew as a fellow faculty member at that point. Moving on to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I remember you offering the idea at the first design meeting that joy can be a form of resistance. Could you talk more about that? How do you see that idea playing out in this play?
KM: I see A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an invitation and a call to action to find joy—to find and dream alternate possibilities of life. Especially right now when the country is so politically divided, making art and finding joy in that art is a way for us to listen to each other and come together across the political spectrum. The other thing that interests me about A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that every character changes in the play. Change and evolution are constant in our lives, and I think this play explores that theme beautifully.
KYN: What parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream give you joy?
KM: All of it. There are the Mechanicals, the townsfolk who decide to put on a theatre production for the nobles. They bring a lot of silliness to the play, but their sense of joy also comes from a deep yearning to do something meaningful. And I think we get joy from watching the Mechanicals fully pursue this yearning. Even if they know they might fail, they go for it, which encompasses the possibility of both joy and frustration. I think what Shakespeare gives us through these characters is a great model of every artistic process. There is also so much joy in the young lovers. But I am interested in exploring the flip side of joy and elation, which is heartbreak, in characters like Hermia and Helena. At the beginning of the play, Hermia is devastated because her father and Theseus, the ruler of Athens, forbid her from loving Lysander and force her to marry Demetrius. But that turns into the possibility of a new beginning. She decides to start a new life by running away with Lysander. There is joy in that, certainly, but it also connects to Helena’s heartbreak and desperation, as she is in love with Demetrius. I think that to explore joy theatricality, you also have to explore heartbreak. You cannot get to joy without first finding that deep feeling of desperation.
“I see A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an invitation and a call to action to find joy—to find and dream alternate possibilities of life.”
KYN: Going back to what you said earlier about change being the only constant thing in the play, I think that transformation can sometimes feel wonderful and joyous, but it can also be scary at times. I am thinking of the scene where Puck puts the magic spell on Bottom that transforms him partly into a donkey. That scene is funny to us in the audience, but for the other Mechanicals who suddenly see their friend turn into a monster, it is terrifying. That transformation could also be a scary experience for Bottom because he is suddenly unsure who he is and whether what he is experiencing is real or not.
KM: Absolutely. That is what Shakespeare does so brilliantly. My goal for the production is to find the fear and deeper meaning underneath the humor and fun.
KYN: Could you talk about the world of the play? A Midsummer Night’s Dream is divided into two settings: the human world of Athens and the magical world of the forest. How are you and the designers interpreting these two worlds?
KM: The world of Athens feels rigid—timeless in its uniformity and conformity. When I read the play again after knowing that I would be directing it, I kept seeing big, monumental architecture in Athens that gave me a feeling of confinement. I thought about times in my life when I felt confined, and that made me think of schools and other institutional environments that have very rigid rules. That led to the designers and I thinking about the uniformity of Athens in terms of a boarding school, where students live and so are surrounded by those rules all the time. I think the boarding school environment that we are developing works as a metaphor for the rigid and uniform world of Athens that Shakespeare’s text evokes.
The forest is a contrast to that. When thinking about this setting, I was inspired by the Shakespearean scholar Emma Smith, who talks about the forest being a space of the id—a subconscious dream space. The forest represents things that we might explore in our dreams but not in real life. It is a space that represents play, fun, wild abandon, and desire. Emma Smith also talks about dreams being a kind of puppet stage where we can enact things that we would never go through in our real lives. That made me think about the inherent theatricality of the woods, as well as the music that Shakespeare writes in the forest scenes. Our ideas for the forest lean into these ideas, which are inspired by the aesthetics of circus, punk rock, and camp.
KYN: I love that idea about the forest as a puppet stage for subconscious thoughts. It has implications for the magic flower that propels the plot. Some might say that the flower is an external force that arbitrarily changes the characters’ true romantic feelings. Along those lines, one might argue that Oberon and Puck are messing with people’s true feelings. But if the flower is a part of the forest as a dream space and a space of the unconscious, then you could say that the magic actually reflects feelings that are living deep inside the characters. Those unconscious feelings are given the chance to be expressed when the young lovers leave Athens.
KM: Yes, I agree. It also has implications for some of the doubling in the play. Like many productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, our production will have the actors playing Theseus and Hippolyta, the leaders of Athens, also playing Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairy World. But rather than that just being a practical decision, I think we can ask what that doubling could mean. If we see Titania and Oberon as subconscious versions of Hippolyta and Theseus, it leads to all kinds of fun possibilities, where they might be tightly wound up in the beginning, but then, once we enter the forest, we see them explore themselves in all their humanity that they are not allowed to do in society. I think that gives the actors more to work with, rather than just treating the doubling as two different characters that are not related.
KYN: Titania and Oberon also get to have a fight in the forest, which is something that Hippolyta and Theseus do not do in Athens, even though there might be tension in their relationship if you know the full story of the Greek myth that Shakespeare is borrowing from. In Athens, the rulers have to perform this idea of the perfect couple regardless of how they feel inside. But those social pressures are lifted in the dream world of the forest. And so, Oberon and Titania fighting and eventually making up over the course of the play might also bode well for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding at the end. As a final question, what are your thoughts about doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream outdoors, and about outdoor theatre in general?
KM: Outdoor theatre is such a wonderful and different experience. It almost feels like the rigid rules that are sometimes put on indoor theatre go away. We get to eat our popcorn and drink our wine beer or soda. We get to experience the show—be involved in the show—in a way that is closer to audiences in Shakespeare’s time. As a director, that is a gift to be able to explore. When the characters are talking about the moon, you get to look up and see the moon. It is a unique experience that we could never replicate if we were indoors. I think that lends itself so well to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
KYN: I agree. I think this is one of the best Shakespeare plays to see outdoors. I am looking forward to that experience this summer!
“Outdoor theatre is such a wonderful and different experience. It almost feels like the rigid rules that are sometimes put on indoor theatre go away.”
