A Midsummer Night
June 22nd, 2009
This Friday, June 26, we’ll be celebrating the summer solstice by projecting Max Reinhardt’s 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at 9pm in our courtyard. Doors open at 7pm.
Since it doesn’t get dark outside until 9pm, we’ll be entertaining our guests for the first two hours in a variety of ways. The most exciting of which, to me, is a reunion of the performers from the Pulitzer’s now finished series: Staging Old Masters: Former Prisoners Perform at the Pulitzer.
Select scenes, such as the St. Sebastian, Self-Portrait with an Easel, and As You Like It – Shepherd & Shepherdess, will be performed in our courtyard throughout the night. These performances were originally done in front of specific artworks in our galleries, but by moving them outdoors, we hope to accomodate a bigger audience than was allowed indoors. In addition to these skits, we’ll be serving free refreshments and as usual, our Old Masters exhibition will be on view for the duration of the evening.
Are you excited to come? Have you circled the date and time in red marker in your calendar? Are you waiting with baited breath? I am too, but never fear, Friday will be here soon enough!
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1. 1
This event is free and open to the public, so bring your friends!
This film is a brilliant choice; I have long wanted to see it. If you enjoy art inspiring art, or arcana, take a look at the Kage Baker novel “Rude Mechanicals.” She set the novel at the rehearsals and production of the Max Reinhardt production at the Hollywood Bowl in 1934. To read her description is to read of magic in the production. To read her novel is to enter the Baker world of “The Company” and I won’t even attempt to explain what that is all about. But, our favorites Joseph and Lewis, as usual working as an actor/stuntman, are tasked with saving the Reinhardt promptbooks for sale a few hundred years in the future. OK, I can not make this up: a lost diamond, a third century Pope, some theft and car chase, Reinhardt & Co in their Germanic best, and try to imagine Joseph costumed as Mr. Peanut. The original publication was limited edition, signed by the author, and I have just got to see this movie. Tom