A Midsummer Night's Dream
at UTD University Theatre

2601 N. Floyd Road
Richardson, TX 75083
When: Feb. 15 - Feb. 24
Fridays - Saturdays, 8 pm
Sundays, 2:30 pm
About the event
By TOM SIME / The Dallas Morning News

Performance artist, director and University of Texas at Dallas professor Fred Curchack has had A Midsummer Night's Dream in his blood for a long time.

"When I was 16, I toured with Joseph Papp's production of it, as a techie," recalls Mr. Curchack, 54. "I knew it for years before that, and, like so many people, I thought I knew the play inside and out."

All the more so after he created his 1992 performance What Fools These Mortals Be, which condensed Shakespeare's fanciful comedy into a 90-minute solo tour de force showcasing Mr. Curchack's talents for shadow and puppet play ("cheapo special effects"), multiple voices, and irreverent to outrageous literary and social commentary.

Now he's directing and starring as Oberon, King of the Fairies, in a full production of Shakespeare's original at UTD. The production features a new score by UTD resident composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez, who recorded the music with 12 members of the Dallas Opera orchestra.

Mr. Curchack has learned that there's still more to learn about Midsummer. "The more we work on it, the deeper it takes us into the woods," he says. "It's not only this joyous new encounter with an old, familiar work, but it's also a new encounter with myself."

He wrote What Fools These Mortals Be "during a very difficult period, when I was going through a protracted divorce," he says. "That piece was one of my ways of dealing with ... the breakup of a 16-year marriage. I have long since come to terms with a lot of the issues that were tormenting me at the time, and I think I see much more deeply into what's actually in the play."

Now he's happily settled with domestic and artistic partner Shannon Kearns, who plays Titania, queen of the fairies, one of a gaggle of gods and spirits who get involved in the affairs of foolish mortals in Midsummer.

"It's tongue-in-cheek, it's funny, it's highly irreverent and highly heretical by Elizabethan standards, and also by today's," Mr. Curchack says of Shakespeare's text. "One of my former students says it's his favorite play, but since he teaches at Oral Roberts University, they won't let him do it, because of the satanic spirits or whatever."

The play is recommended for mature audiences, but that's not because of nudity or overt sexuality. "It's too hard for kids, and it's not a charming, innocent version. But there's nothing you can't see on TV," says the director.

Mr. Curchack and Mr. Rodriguez have been working together regularly for years. The composer wrote music for Mr. Curchack's Sexual Mythology series, and Mr. Curchack has performed in Mr. Rodriguez's works The Last Night of Don Juan and The Song of Songs.

"I'm an immense fan of Robert's music," Mr. Curchack says of Mr. Rodriguez, whose Frida, an opera based on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, recently opened to acclaim in Vienna. "So as much as I would like to think that my acting and directing this has some value to the community, I know that his music ... is a world-class event happening."

Published in The Dallas Morning News: 02.15.02

UTD's 'Dream' sparkles
Curchack leads cast, audience into an enchanting experience

02/16/2002

By TOM SIME / The Dallas Morning News

RICHARDSON – How odd it is to see Fred Curchack playing just one role – two, counting director – in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Having fashioned the play into the deeply personal solo work What Fools These Mortals Be 10 years ago, he's turned Shakespeare's comedy outside-out again for a new production that opened at the University of Texas at Dallas on Friday night.

Leading the pack of fresh contributors is composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez, whose rich, lilting new score, prerecorded with 14 musicians from the Musica Nova ensemble, gives the cast a whole extra forest to revel in along with the enchanted wood of the play.

The show begins with a characteristic Curchack touch, a shadow play with a stirring confluence of depth and scale as performers and lights interweave behind a scrim. Then we find ourselves in more familiar territory as the story begins with Theseus, Duke of Athens (Jim Innocent), preparing to marry his conquered prize, the Amazon queen Hippolyta (Deanna Deck).

A troupe of actors led by Nick Bottom (David Lozano) is making plans to put on a play at the wedding banquet. And two would-be couples – Hermia (Mandi Cheek) and Lysander (Ben Rosario), Demetrius (Sven Moon) and Helena (Naomi McCullar) – are trying to sort out their cross-currents and get married themselves.

One night in the forest outside Athens, all of the above end up getting entangled with Oberon, King of Fairies (Mr. Curchack) and his queen, Titania (Shannon Kearns), who're having their own bumpy ride. But spells and missed connections aren't enough to divert the course of true love.

Mr. Curchack, Mr. Lozano, Ms. Kearns and Maryam Baig as Puck stand out in the strong cast. And Micki Saba's playful choreography nicely complements the delicious musical score. Like Mr. Rodriguez's, hers is one of many imaginations Mr. Curchack has let in by letting go. He might call the result, as Helena says of Demetrius, a jewel "mine own, and not mine own."

A Midsummer Night's Dream, presented in the University Theater at the University of Texas at Dallas, 2601 N. Floyd Road, Richardson, through Feb. 24. Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets $15 general, free to UTD students, $5 to other students. Call 972-883-2787.