A midsummer's night dream. With Ninjas. Starring John Goodman

A midsummer's night dream. With Ninjas. 

Starring John Goodman
By Jason Shirtz

Assignment concept: "as a costume designer, you are required to create a design for "a midsummer's night dream", focusing on the mystical, light, elf-like properties of Oberon, Titania, and Puck. At the last moment your producer informs you that John Goodman, has been cast as Oberon. Deal."

my response to this, was "wow if we could get John Goodman on a rope, even he at 6'2'' in height, would look pretty elf and magical. How to do that...."

My response, was well to go to something i already knew a lot about. Wire-fu and other martial arts in media.

With that general aim in mind, I did some preliminary research on Midsummer. here's what I found.

*Chivalric myth cites Oberon as a dwarf, and an enchanter. 

*The transformation of Nick Bottom's head into that of an Donkey, is clearly an act of animal based magic.

*The use of drugs/poisons (in the form of a love potion) applied in secret while characters are sleeping is a core part of the play.

*The title of the play "A midsummer's night dream" invokes an air of illusion, myth and disbelief on the play.

*The play takes place in Greece. The Greeks would be familiar with the idea that gods and other mythic figures have different names in different cultures, due to their interactions with the Romans, and their shared myths.

*According to Shakespeare, the faeries had come from India.

How I used these bits to add "with ninja's" to the play.

*Japanese myth,  tells of Jiraya, an sorceror/ninja who can transform into and summon toads, his love Tsunade who has magic over slugs, and Jiraya's one time pupil, later rival with power over snakes Orochimaru 

*As prior mentioned, transformation into animals, was a power shared by Jiraya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru , that works well with the transformation of a head into a donkey's thematically.

*Ninjas, do in fact use poisons, drugs, and stealth to achieve their ends, not dissimilar to the action in the original play by the 3 faeries. 

*Ninja's working in the night, and being master's of illusion, works well with the overall themes of the play, and it's title.

*An extra scene could be added as a prologue. The goal, would be to start the play with a "ninja fight" that would explain the 3 ninja's magical transformation powers, that they passed through India on the way to Greece, but were from Japan, and that for whatever reason, the people in this country called them "Oberon, Titania, and Puck" rather  than their given names "Jiraya, Titania, and Orochimaru" 

Scenic/Scaling elements:

To highlight the fact that Oberon, is supposed to be a "dwarf" despite the fact that John Goodman is 6'2'' the following scenic technique will be used.

A Bonsai tree, 1' tall, will be on the set to represent the "human scale" for all of the action that takes place with the Greek nobility.

Whenever the three faeries, are talking only between themselves, they will be standing in ninja costume, near a 6' tall replica of the same Bonsai tree.

Whenever the three fairies need to "Transform" into their animal forms (Toad, slug, and snake) to directly interact with the rest of the cast, a double will play their roles, in themed animal costumes. 

These doubles will be doing all of the "ninja fighting" involved with the production. (namely whenever puck has to get passed the guards to douse someone with love potion, and any other excuses that I can contrive for extra violence.)

There will likely need to be some scenic painting to both scales to help create this illusion for the audience.

Bonus Points:

The three ninja's of the aforementioned Japanese myth, are often used as pop culture references in Japan. Most notably, is their usage in Masashi Kishimoto's famous Manga"Naruto" which has them playing key roles as the mentor's to the heroes. This highly popular Manga was adapted into an very, very popular anime, and both were localized for western release in the United States.

Despite the fact that Masashi Kishimoto directly lifted these three characters from a public domain mythology, they are largely unknown to western audiences in any other form whatsoever.

This means that this production, would have a natural target audience in the many, many Naruto fans, on this side of the Pacific. It would also present an marketing opportunity, within the play, to make savvy allusions to the Naruto world, that fans will get, but will not in any way infringe on Masashi Kishimoto's intellectual property.

For example, the character of Jiraya, in Naruto has a very similar facial structure to John Goodman, by sheer happenstance.

Next, fans of the Naruto Anime/manga will be quick to point out that Jiraya is a huge pervert, who in addition to being a ninja, and being able to summon and transform into toads, writes a popular series of light porn novels.

I would make an allusion to that, in the "added" scene at the beginning of the play,  by having my "Oberon/Jiraya" quip that William Shakespeare, did in fact not write "A Midsummer's night dream" and that it, in fact was authored by none other than him. 

Since the base play starts with the kind of lurid elements one would expect from Kishimoto's Jiraya, and speculation of Shakespeare's plays being written by other authors is a time honored tradition, this jest would do double duty for the more genre-savvy audience members in attendance. 

Finally, and most importantly, this placing of "ninja's" does no real harm to the Shakespeare narrative. It does precious little to change the dramatic action of the story. It does nothing to change the stakes other than adding some much needed "ninja fights" to help engage younger audiences.

 It also adds some new sources of humor into the mix, that happens to be entirely compatible with midsummer's farcical nature. It also brings knowledge of legendary Japanese cultural figures to the west, and presents them in a way that encourages a greater understanding of the underlying similarities between all human cultures. 

While there may be some concern of legal action against the production, by Kishimoto or his publishing company, or their license holders, the fact of the matter is, that Kishimoto neither invented ninjas, or the specific ninja's referenced in this adaptation. 

As long as care is taken, to research costume designs form original historical sources that do not directly copy those of Kishimoto, even if there are some superficial similarities, it will be defensible from a legal standpoint, especially considering the "right to parody" clause built into US copyright protection laws. 

As one might infer, using ninja's with this play, may sound like a cheap, dumb gimmick at first, but very much in line with the themes of Naruto, heroism, truth, and the art of ninjutsu  can not only be found in the most unlikely of places, but in the most unlikely of people.