lunatic lover poet

I'm not sure why Midsummer Night's Dream gripped me so tightly this time around ... I really, really enjoyed the Flux Theater Ensamble, especially the lovers. Which is high praise because, as a rube, I bank on the mechanicals to get me through the poetry recitals and the "splayed fingers are mysterious" fairy gyrations.

Appearently, the actors submerged themselves in the meanings of every phrase (which, though admirable, may have done something funky to the mechanicals' comedy? -- and what's with the balloon-boobed Thisbe all the time?)

Then, director August Schulenberg added a note in the program echoing a beloved professor of mine (who might have screwed me up for life) -- something about Midsummer, the mystery of love, its supernatural aspects ...
I believe that the "yes,-it's-love!" certainty is a sister to the mysterious God-love that tells us, "Yes, I'm real. Yes, it's true."
Then, we surrender to what we can't entirely quantify: faith.

"In the 1557 Geneva Bible (the version most likely to hae been in Shakespeare's home), that passage (dealing with the impossiblility of describing an encounter with the divine) ends with 'For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the bottom of God's secrets.'

"The Bottom of God's secrets! If this is a deliberate echo on Bottom's part (and Shakespeare's), then we can asume this epiphany is about a deeper transformation then man to ass; it is also about the change that happens from a brush with the transcendent -- a change that could only be described if eyes could hear, if hands could taste, if the heart could report in its own language."

Shakespeare 101, I guess, but I thrilled to how he put the inexplicable, "brush with the transcendent."

And, because I love his passion: "All the characters in this wood have been torn in some way, and in this play of weavers (magical and otherwise), some are mended, and most are forgiven. And I am torn, too, for all the moments in the play I could not find a way, or time, to report. The play has streaked our eyes with Love, and we are chasing it through the woods, but it will not stay for us."