Shakespeare was a rite of passage for me. In the school I attended, the sixth graders put on an annual production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (for nearly two decades now, I think). Next to graduation, AMND was the most important event of our grade school lives, and the pageant season was something everyone looked forward to — the school transforms into a magical place when Shakespeare-spouting elves and fairies, noble lords and fair ladies, and mustached mechanicals traipse around the campus, heightening the excitement for the much-awaited annual performance.
It was the pre-digicam ’90s so I don’t have any pictures of our production (the play photos are of a recent batch from the school website), but I don’t think any of us will forget our AMND experience. Up to now, you can ask any of us who were in that play and we can probably recite whole acts from memory.