For one of the seventeen Shakespeareans who read aloud "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Menlo Park on August 23, 2009, the afternoon brought to her mind moments of a very famous production of this play that she had witnessed : Director Peter Brook's 1970 interpretation for The Royal Shakespeare Company. (So innovating was this staging of Shakespeare's classic comedy, that it is remembered as "Peter Brook's Dream," and became a standard reference for late 20th-century "modern" Shakespearean productions.)
The presence of two old friends who had been with me since the beginning of my Shakespeare Reading Club adventures in the 1980's brought special happiness and continuity to the event: Tom, who has attended every version of "Shakespeare Reading Club" since 1983, and Ron, who literally drove over Straight to Shakespeare from SFO where his plane landed that morning and who now lives in Milwaukee. Old friends mixed with new ones as we explored, savored, and discussed Shakespeare's poetry throughout the afternoon.
-- Clifford Schwartz
