During the fall of 2013, my senior year of college, I was cast in the HWS main stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Titania, queen of the fairy kingdom. For those not familiar with the play, there are two-three intersecting story lines that comprise the plot, the first of the mortals (most prominently, the two sets of star-crossed lovers), and the second of the fairies who inhabit the forest in which the majority of the play is set. The king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania are in a domestic dispute so severe that it has caused the seasons to reverse—it should be winter but is, in fact, summer. To the best of our knowledge this row began because of Oberon’s infidelity, which provoked Titania to leave him and take several lovers of her own.
Besides the textual evidence of Titania being a wildly powerful badass (changing the seasons with her rage, fighting fire with fire in response to her husband’s infidelity, etc.) Chris Hatch, our director, crafted a number of unwritten moments into the production illustrating even further the extent of Titania’s unparalleled influence over the beings and elements around her. In Act II scene 1, best known for the first appearance of the fairy kingdom and the large amount of exposition it gives regarding the situation between Oberon and Titania, our production included a choreographed fairy battle scene between the fairies that have allied themselves with Oberon versus those of Titania. In this scene, Titania and Oberon were positioned at opposite ends of the stage with Titania standing atop a staircase and thus at a much higher physical level than Oberon, from where she commands her warrior fairies. We see Titania’s fairies ultimately win the fairy battle.
Titania is so powerful, in fact, that the only way Oberon can conquer her is to put a magic spell on her while she is asleep, a conniving scheme to say the least. And yet, in every review and advertisement of the show that appeared in both HWS and Geneva publications, Oberon was described as the ruler of the fairy kingdom. The quote that sticks out most vividly in my mind, appeared in the Finger Lakes Times on November 3, 2013. The recollection of it is always accompanied by a flutter of rage and indignation read as follows: “Daniel Bullock’s fairy king Oberon is strong and compelling, while Nora Mackay as Titania, his queen, is appropriately vain, even in her own foolishness.” Besides the usual wounding an actor experiences at her/his name being misspelled, I couldn’t believe what was (in my opinion) the reviewer’s complete misinterpretation of the characters.
I do not know if this was based on the writers’ previous knowledge of the plot of the play or their own interpretation of the production, but either way I was deeply distressed by the depiction. Regardless, it seems to reflect that the general public, when presented with the figures of a king and a queen, has an ingrained inclination to position the king as a more powerful figure. As I read each publication about the production, I felt more and more that my own experience of playing such a powerful female role (the most powerful I have ever played, and arguably the most powerful in Shakespeare) was being devalued.
I think it’s true that all feminists experience moments where they feel like they’ve lost the battle for women’s empowerment. Had I been braver or stronger or less busy, maybe I would have sat down and written a letter in response to the review in the Finger Lakes Times and I would have been able to give feminism the last word. As I failed to do that, I count this as one of my lost battles. While I still look back on it with deep frustration, I find the experience useful both as fuel for my passion about the necessity of feminism, and as a space for reflection.
Besides the textual evidence of Titania being a wildly powerful badass (changing the seasons with her rage, fighting fire with fire in response to her husband’s infidelity, etc.) Chris Hatch, our director, crafted a number of unwritten moments into the production illustrating even further the extent of Titania’s unparalleled influence over the beings and elements around her. In Act II scene 1, best known for the first appearance of the fairy kingdom and the large amount of exposition it gives regarding the situation between Oberon and Titania, our production included a choreographed fairy battle scene between the fairies that have allied themselves with Oberon versus those of Titania. In this scene, Titania and Oberon were positioned at opposite ends of the stage with Titania standing atop a staircase and thus at a much higher physical level than Oberon, from where she commands her warrior fairies. We see Titania’s fairies ultimately win the fairy battle.
Titania is so powerful, in fact, that the only way Oberon can conquer her is to put a magic spell on her while she is asleep, a conniving scheme to say the least. And yet, in every review and advertisement of the show that appeared in both HWS and Geneva publications, Oberon was described as the ruler of the fairy kingdom. The quote that sticks out most vividly in my mind, appeared in the Finger Lakes Times on November 3, 2013. The recollection of it is always accompanied by a flutter of rage and indignation read as follows: “Daniel Bullock’s fairy king Oberon is strong and compelling, while Nora Mackay as Titania, his queen, is appropriately vain, even in her own foolishness.” Besides the usual wounding an actor experiences at her/his name being misspelled, I couldn’t believe what was (in my opinion) the reviewer’s complete misinterpretation of the characters.
I do not know if this was based on the writers’ previous knowledge of the plot of the play or their own interpretation of the production, but either way I was deeply distressed by the depiction. Regardless, it seems to reflect that the general public, when presented with the figures of a king and a queen, has an ingrained inclination to position the king as a more powerful figure. As I read each publication about the production, I felt more and more that my own experience of playing such a powerful female role (the most powerful I have ever played, and arguably the most powerful in Shakespeare) was being devalued.
I think it’s true that all feminists experience moments where they feel like they’ve lost the battle for women’s empowerment. Had I been braver or stronger or less busy, maybe I would have sat down and written a letter in response to the review in the Finger Lakes Times and I would have been able to give feminism the last word. As I failed to do that, I count this as one of my lost battles. While I still look back on it with deep frustration, I find the experience useful both as fuel for my passion about the necessity of feminism, and as a space for reflection.