A Midsummer Night’s Dream, South Florida-Style

While fairy machinations in an enchanted forest may seem like a bit of a stretch, A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of Shakespeare’s most accessible comedies. With a cast of fascinating characters weaving multiple plotlines into the fabric of a masterpiece, its themes of love, loss of identity, and redemption remain universal. Although the play still carries water centuries later, the scene—a fairy-enchanted forest in Athens—falls a little short here in South Florida…until now.

   On April 1-3, the Miami City Ballet will bring Shakespeare’s comedy of forbidden love and redemption to the stage with distinct South Florida flair with sets and costume design by internationally renowned Miami-based artist, Michele Oka Doner.

      A multifaceted artist, whose career crosses decades and media, Oka Doner is probably best known for her work with cast bronze, from sculpture to intricately inlayed floors cast in terrazzo. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, even in her more abstract work like the coralline sculpture series, Figures (cast bronze, below), human form merges with a rendition of a complex, living structure of a coral reef that haunts as much as it draws in the viewer.

   This connection to nature, and this watery inspiration, acts as the catalyst for Oka Doner and MCB’s Artistic Director, Lourdes Lopez, particular vision for A Midsummers Night’s Dream. “I am setting it in South Florida, underwater,” Oka Doner told me over a phone interview. “You can definitely expect to see Hippolyta coming out of the estuary in mangrove skirt.”

   Pulling on cues from her native Miami, Shakespeare’s Athenian comedy has undergone an estuarine overhaul while remaining true to the spirit of the tale. “We have mangroves, corals…the castle at the end is not Athens, rather Miami’s Coral Castle. So it’s local, it’s our story; it’s a South Florida love story.”

   The reimagining goes beyond Oka Doner’s set pieces and flowing, ethereal costuming; as a ballet, Shakespeare’s classic repartee has been transformed into motion. The cherry on top of MCB’s thirtieth season, the ballet is set to choreography by George Balanchine and accompanied by music from Felix Mendelssohn, all of which will be interpreted by Miami playwright, Tarell Alvin McCraney, who is giving the production dramatic direction. With a cast of 24 children, six vocalists, the fabulous MCB dancers, and the Opus One Orchestra, Shakespeare’s tangled web of storylines, which Puck would like all to believe is just a dream, will dazzle and amaze as only South Florida can.

PBI.com we spoke with Oka Doner about her artistic sensibilities, the abstraction of idea, set design, and the art of space.

Have you worked with ballet set design before?

Oka Doner: This is the first time I have designed costumes and sets. Lourdes Lopez, Miami City Ballet’s director, invited us to try it. She had talked to several other people, and I think she said my work had a classical bend as well as ethereal beauty, and she thought that I could take this on.

Did shifting from bronze—a hard and firm material—to fabric for the costuming pose any unique challenges for you?

Well, fortunately I design the costumes, and the costume houses have to figure what fabric is washable in the machine, yet gives you the shine of Mother of Pearl. I have designed it, and approving the samples, but they have to render all of my designs into usable, functionable materiality. I’m pretty lucky there, that’s their problem.

How did art find you?

I believe I was trained from a very early age to consider how things went together, how things looked, what I would call harmony. I was raised in a home that had a lot of harmony, where things were considered and not just set down. That’s a big factor. I believe that that is what creative life is;lair not buying something to put on a wall—that’s not what art is. Art is really a way of life, a way of living.

What mediums do you work in?

I work in all mediums: I use bronze; I’ve used clay; made things in glass—architectural glass as well as functional objects; works in silver; works on paper. For me, it’s the idea and the application that are important—I’m not devoted to one material. Materiality is very fluid, its very flexible. And it does take a long time to master materials, but I have been working a long time, and it keeps expanding.

     To be an artist you have to be a chemist, an alchemist, a scientist, and a geologist—you have to really know materials. When you work with these [materials], you learn history, philosophy; there are so many aspects of understanding our lives that open up to you.

Do you have a favorite?

I think wax at this point. Strangely I love the warmth of it, and I love the flexibility and fluidity of it—it records what I have in my fingers, the movement, the emotional energy; it’s so receptive. You can also heat it up and pour it. That’s how I did the floor at the Miami Airport. That floor started in wax blocks that were then melted.

   In order to make a bronze, you have to make it in another material first; bronze is hard, so you have to heat it up and pour it into a mold. My first [molds] were made from clay, but as I came more aware of the possibilities of wax I moved into making things with it. It allows for more spontaneity.

How does nature sway your inspiration?

I always have drawn inspiration from nature, always have. I think more and more we are becoming aware that there such a deep interconnectedness, and we can’t afford to jeopardize the future of this extraordinary, not only beauty, but life itself. I try to transfer that energy into material—give them life. Otherwise I think work is inert. I don’t want that and I don’t want anyone else to have that either.

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