Although it didn’t exactly feel like Midsummer, the PAC definitely felt very magical at the end of January when Year 4 performed their play ‘A 175 Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
There is a long tradition of performing Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ here at Canons, often using the grounds as a setting for a promenade performance. In this year in which we celebrate 175 years of NLCS, Year 4 presented their own version of Shakespeare’s magical comedy. We fused the traditional and the contemporary, which feels pretty NLCS to me. Framing Shakespeare’s text, Mrs Rushbrook wrote a story about some NLCS girls in 2025 rehearsing their own version of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (a play within a play, similar to that of the rude mechanicals’) when Puck appears to wreak some mischief on the unsuspecting actors. There were no donkey heads for our school girl characters; instead Puck whisks them back in time through various performances of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at NLCS and right into Shakespeare’s original story.
The girls used Shakespeare’s original text, slightly abridged, and Mrs Rushbrook said “It was a pleasure working with Year 4 to help them understand the words and feelings behind this iconic text. It probably won’t surprise you to know we have had some great feminist discussions about the treatment of Hermia and Titania in the play too!”
Year 4 loved performing in the PAC for the first time, bringing the story to life for the parents and peers, working with the beautiful set and exciting props made by Mr Boase. Nour played Bottom and said she felt very lucky because she got to wear the donkey head! All Year 4 agreed the best compliment they received was when a Year 6 girl said “I couldn’t understand many of the actual words, but I understood everything you were saying. Because you made your feelings so clear, it all made sense and I loved it.”
