A Midsummer Night's Puppet: The Whole Story

John 7:24 - "... but judge righteous judgment."

Yesterday, I went to go see a live action/puppet performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream with a friend of mine!

For those of you familiar with Shakespeare's original, the idea was that Puck and the mortal/fairy royalty were played by physical actors, while every other role was played by a cast of puppets, with wardrobe changes, even. The puppeteers themselves did a wonderful job, too, of course.

For those of you unfamiliar with the play, the story follows three principal groups (the troupe, the lovers, and the fairies) and their interactions with each other. The troupe is preparing to put on a performance for their monarchs, the lovers are naturally quarreling, and the fairies are mischieveously wreaking havoc upon the otherwise peacefulness of the evening. Throw in some magical herbs, a transmogrification, and a wall with lines, and you pretty much can imagine how nuts things got.

The thing is, the play itself only ran for an hour, which I presume is much shorter than the original. After all, the company was trying to make the performance accessible to children as well, which basically meant my friend and I failed to fully comprehend the full story. Neither of us were incredibly familiar with this particular segment of Shakespeare's work, and as such, we were subject to understanding the original based on the adaptation. As it was, my personal theory concerning the play was that Shakespeare wrote it to poke fun at Romeo and Juliet. It was almost as though previous audiences had complained of the downer double suicide, and so Shakespeare used the cloak of a completely different play to propose an alternate ending to the original.

Of course, there's a total chance that I got that impression simply because of the way the company performed it. I didn't have the complete story, and as such, couldn't really formulate an exact opinion. 

This got me thinking about how quick I was to land upon a theory without the full story (which, heretofore, I have yet to research), and how often I might do that in terms of my impressions of people, situations, and philosophies. There have been many times when I've ascribed possible motives to individuals' actions which may be completely erroneous. Yet, in my recent memory, I often internally declare my suspicions to be most correct, oftentimes leading me to less than optimal opinions.

My challenge to you all today is to make sure you, too, get the whole story before you make any uneducated assumptions. Of course, we can't always get everything, and there is a way to judge righteously, but do so while reminding yourself that we can't know everything about someone else.

Love you guys! See you for the Sunday Snapshot tomorrow!