Natural Lighting

It was the last night of the run of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, and the smallest fairy had to give a long speech in a lispy voice every time they performed, and her wings were, perhaps, growing heavy. In between scenes, she stole away from behind the curtain and meandered through the audience to where her parents sat, perching herself next to them on their blanket.

And because the play was being performed tucked in a corner of Fort Ward Park in Alexandria, and because a large group was having a birthday party behind the audience, often the conversation of the fathers grilling meat for the party drowned out the voice of the smallest fairy, of the redhead playing Snug (who plays a lion in the play-within-the-play), of the jolly man playing Nick Bottom at the points when his voice dropped to nearly a whisper.

My friend Susan and I arrived after the play had begun and followed the signs that pointed "This Way to Fairyland" to find the players acting on a makeshift stage. They played in front of a curtain strung between two trees, and ladders and stepladders hung with faux greenery served as a tree for Puck to hide in and bushes, respectively. Most of the audience was in some way related to one of the players.

"But Daddy," whispered a little boy in front of us, dressed in a tie-dyed t-shirt that clashed miserably with his construction-equipment themed shorts. "They haven't finished the chapter!"

This whisper came as his father made the little boy, who had to go to the bathroom so badly he could barely hobble out of the audience, get up to head for the restroom on the other side of the park. Then, as he hobbled away and the audience clapped during a scene change, he whispered again, "But Daddy, another chapter is starting!"

Susan and I never determined whether the actors were affiliated with a particular community theater group or not. They clearly knew their audience, though. The actors spoke their lines in English some of the time, other times in Spanish, never backtracking to translate, but simply incorporating both languages as if everyone spoke both. And while it was not seamless, and while some of the Spanish accents were better than others, it was not hard to keep track of where they were in the play.

Summer outdoor theater is a staple of Washington D.C. summers. The most famous has already come and gone for the year—each year, the Shakespeare Theater performs a play for free at Carter Barron Ampitheatre in Rock Creek Park. But families can still get their fill of summer theater outside at Baker Park in Frederick, just an hour from D.C. up I-270. A series of Saturday night family theater productions began on July 7 and continues into August. Check it out, and enjoy a night on a picnic blanket as the sun sets.

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