SCERA Presents BYU Young Company's 50-minute Puppet Shakespeare Today

The BYU Young Company, celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, is a troupe dedicated to theatre for young audiences. The group performs in front of 23,000 young people each year on campus, in schools and throughout local communities.

This year, the group's Shakespeare Company presented A Midsummer Night's Dream, adapted and directed by Nat Reed, who is a puppetry professor at BYU and also runs the puppetry program at SCERA. The BYU Young Company is traveling to the SCERA Center for the Arts in Orem for an outreach performance today, March 21 @ 11:00am. The cost is just $3.00/person (ages 3 and older), and is part of SCERA's monthly puppet show program.

Tickets are available in advance at the main office at SCERA Center, 745 South State, Orem, open 10am-6pm weekdays and Saturdays from 12Noon-6pm, by calling (801) 225-ARTS, online at www.scera.org or at the door 30 minutes prior to the performance.

The Bard's popular comedy comes to life at the hands-or, rather, the strings-of a troupe of handmade marionettes. Children will be captivated as they watch the antics of fairies and humans in one of Shakespeare's most famous plays.

The Young Company brings theater to elementary-aged students, and its goal with this production is to capture children's imagination while encouraging interest in The Bard. "This play is kind of like gateway Shakespeare," said director Nat Reed. "It's funny and I think the most accessible of Shakespeare's plays, which makes it a good entry play for kids."

Reed utilized Midsummer - Shakespeare's famous comedy of four star-crossed lovers in the fairy woodland - to mark the occasion. The play features three human actors playing Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, as well as Puck, Oberon's servant. The balance of roles are played by five marionettes (handled by five puppeteers), designed by Reed and made from wood, PVC pipe, foam and papier-mache.

In keeping with tailoring the production to appeal to kids, Midsummer has been cut down from a full-length production to just 50 minutes. The sometimes unwieldy language of Shakespeare has also been pared to make comprehension of the story easier.