Oh man. It's a night to remember for THIS lady.

Students in Diane Paulus and Marjorie Garber’s popular class titled Theater, Dream, Shakespeare got to have a little taste of the discotheque this past week. The class, which focuses on exactly what its title suggests, allows all students a free season pass to the A.R.T.’s Shakespeare Exploded festival. Sweet deal, right?

The first performance of the season students were able to attend was titled The Donkey Show. (And yes. It’s every bit of what you think it is. Well…okay, not really, but sort of.) The show is a disco adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Paulus (of Hair fame) herself, and is performed in Club Oberon — a disco-club-meets-theater-stage on 2 Arrow Street. In the spirit of audience-actor interaction, all students received “dancefloor tickets,” in which everyone got to boogie down with the actors of the show. After the show, the party continues into the night so everyone can break it down on the dancefloor (or on stage)!

Read on as Voice reporter Katie McNicol ’12 puts on her boogie shoes, gets down with glittery half-naked men, and loses herself in this dream-disco world which Paulus has created. Warning: Some semi-scandalous photos ahead — but you know you like it.

woke up this morning, covered in glitter, trying to remember what I loved so much about The Donkey Show. Was it the loud, pounding disco beats? The half-naked man fairies? The raining confetti, flashing lights, oh–and the full bar? Or maybe it was that, standing amidst the dancing people on the floor of Club Oberon, I realized just how right Diane Paulus had gotten it. I’ve seen many theatrical events in my life and after every one, I tend to walk out of the theater thinking to myself, “Those people get to do that for a living?” and “God, I wish I could be up there with them.” This summer, the only Broadway Musical I saw was Hair directed by Diane Paulus herself. My favorite and the most memorable part was at the very end of the show, after the curtain calls, the cast invited audience members onstage to dance. Of course my friends and I rushed onto the set and danced away looking out over the large standing crowd. For a few minutes we could pretend we were the long-haired, out of control, fun loving hippies on Broadway.

Complete with DJ, Oberon the clubmaster, and bouncer.

In The Donkey Show, Diane Paulus, the new artistic director of the A.R.T, took this feeling to a whole new level. Instead of getting to steal a few moments of show time, the audience members are as integral to show as any character or set piece. In effect, we were the set, a large mass of dancing people for the characters to act off of and play through. Not to mention the fact that the entire first half of the show is a disco party… for us to enjoy. But this is no cheap trick to get us in a good mood. Instead, I like to think that Paulus is immersing us into this “dream world” that is reminiscent of the source text of the show, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Throughout the disco, I began to see the brilliant comparison. After all, isn’t Midsummer really just that drunken night after which you wake up, can’t really remember anything and you ask your best friend, “Did that really happen last night?… Did I really do that?” One might even say they know the feeling of doing unmentionable things with someone that can only be referred to as an ass (in the donkey way at least).
The Donkey Show really isn’t about the plot, the characters, or the text (there isn’t a word of Shakespeare in it). It’s about losing yourself in a different world and forgetting about everything else. Until you do a few things you might regret the next morning, you haven’t really experienced the full extent of the show. Don’t let the disco fool you; the spirit of Shakespeare is alive and well at Club Oberon and I personally can’t wait to see what else Diane Paulus has up her sleeve.

Tickets for The Donkey Show are available for purchase until January. Friends and alcohol are highly recommended.

Katie's got a fever...for disco.

Hot glittery men! I mean, er, FAIRIES!