Midsummer Night's Dream Native American choices carefully made
by Glenn Bugala, director of the show

You may want to visit the Design Images page as you read this, for reference to the images I'm going to discuss below.  A link for that page is found at the top.

First of all, how do Native American spirits fit into the world of the play?   Shakespeare wrote of nature spirits in Midsummer Night's Dream...spirits with names like Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Mote, and Cobweb.  It is only natural that a version of the play which takes place in America should utilize Native American earth-based spirits.  Of course, given that we are melding that world with Shakespeare, there are bound to be adjustments that need to be made in both.

The production is a comedy, true, and the other world is 1930's New York City.  I love the fact that the spirit world and the human world are so different.  The whole theme of the play involves the juxtaposition of these two worlds.  In fact, it is imperative that these two worlds be diametrically different.  The spirit world is a world of depth while the human world is frivolous.   The spirit world is powerful and the human world is powerless.  The spirit world is somewhat ordered, while the human world is chaos.  The spirit world offers us the truth (the answer to the play); the humans don't understand it.  Although the spirits themselves do some comical things, there is nothing in the play which shows disrespect for the traditions of the spirit world itself.

I have done research on New York in the 1930's--it's music, it's styles, it's culture.  And I must do the same--more exhaustively--for the spirit world.  I read a lot of information on Lenape traditional beliefs about spirits--the best information coming from the anthropologist Frank Speck, and other information coming from books from the Pennsylvania Philosophical Society (a group which led several Native American studies). I read 4 detailed books on Lenape traditions, from which I learned a great deal.   I also spoke with the writer Joseph Bruchac and with writer Evan Pritchard (author of "No Word for Time").  As of this writing Evan Pritchard is currently finalizing a book about Native Americans who once lived in the New York City area.

It only makes sense for me to see if there are any similar spirits between the Shakespeare play and the Lenape spirit world.  There are actually several. Below is an outline of information I obtained from Evan Pritchard. Included in some parantheticals are the Shakespearean characters that will be applied to these spirits.

LENAPE SPIRITS
  1) Ranking of Nature Spirits from top down
    a) The Great Spirit – Mantoh (resides in 12th heaven) Call to Great Spirit with "ho-o-o" spoken 12 times.
    b) Manitowuk
        i) Sun [male] (Oberon, King of the Spirits)
        ii) Moon [male]
        iii) Mesing^w [male] – tree/hunter spirit-two sided mask, red on the right, black on the left
        iv) Thunder [male]
        v) Earth [female](Titania, Queen of the Spirits)
        vi) Four Winds
    c) Clan animals
        i) Wolf
        ii) Turkey
        iii) Turtle [male](Animal spirit in Oberon's Train)
    d) Little People – sprites with mouths like rabbits
    e) Manitu - Nature Spirits
        i) Corn [female]– important spirit, mask made of corn husk
        ii) Squash—(Peaseblossom) flower spirit!
        iii) Linu [female] (Mote) “Little Flower”—Grandmother—blue light over right shoulder, long white hair, white face
        iv) Goosefoot (Mustardseed)—small seed plant.
        v) Grandmother Spider [female] (Cobweb)—helper spirit that brings people together in her web for peacemaking, white face, long white hair
        vi) Owayoo [male] (Deer spirit in Oberon's Train) Gentle, Grandfather spirit, white face, long white hair
        vii) Oak Tree/Acornhead (Tree spirit in Oberon's Train) —has special meaning—Helper spirit.
        viii) Mishom--Grandfather rock—very helpful. Rocks give their lives to the steam for Sweating ceremonies.  Human looking spirit—white face, long white hair.
        ix) Hawk [male](Puck)
        x) Beans

There is an important distinction that needs to be made: The characters we are portraying are not Lenape tribesmen; they are the spirits themselves.  We are setting out to represent the actual animals and plants instead of human beings.  However, we use the Lenape viewpoint on these creatures to develop an understanding of them.  And it is important to note that these creatures, unlike in Southwestern tribes, are not represented in ceremonial dances--so we don't have extant costumes to draw from for these designs,

Another important thing to say is, we will not utilize ceremonial or sacred traditions.  And we will not dance ceremonial or sacred dances.   Our goal is not to intrude on traditions but to more fully express the characters in the play.

Perhaps you may wonder at our using the Turtle, a Clan Animal.  In some tribes the Clan Animal is a sacred creature, and it would be inappropriate to use them in a production like "Midsummer".  I have been assured by Mike Pace, Development Director of the Oklahoma Lenape, that Clan Animals may be depicted, and are not as sacred as they are in other tribes.  In fact, he says, Lenape even ate their Clan Animals.

In one of our interpretive choices, we have decided to go with the Shakespearean viewpoint of the Moon as a female, in spite of the fact that the Moon is a male in Lenape tradition.   This was necesitated by the fact that the Moon is given distinctively female characteristics in several key lines in the play.

COSTUME CONCEPTS:  One of my books discussed "vision quests" for the young men, when they met their guardian spirits. The parents would force their son out of the house and into the woods. There, he would meet his guardian spirit. In almost every case, the spirit appeared as a human to him, then when it turned away it was revealed that it was an animal, plant, or force of nature. This production will play on that. The front of the spirit will look more human and the back of it to look more like the creature. Take at look at my "Early Spirit Design"  below by clicking on the image to see what I'm talking about.

In more recent designs, you can get a better idea of how we will do this:

Remember, with costumes, we are not depicting Lenape Tribesmen, but the actual manitu.  We may use Lenape dress as a guide, but we have expressly chosen creatures which are not ceremonial, and therefore aren't represented with costumes.  Thus, as there are no Lenape costume depictions of these creatures (as is seen in the Southwest), we must use our imaginations.  The costumes will be a skin tone unitard dyed in earth tones that are similar to the coloring one would expect from that particular animal or plant.  This will be done by twisting the cloth in various colored dyes.  Attached to the unitard will be small strips of the cloth on the chest, perhaps the groin area, and at the bottom of the legs on the human side. The entire back of the costume will reflect the animal which is being represented.  This will be done by attaching cloth and other materials to the costume.  Above, you see a representation of Puck, the Eagle spirit.  The flap of leather over the groin, very much in the Lenape summer costume for men would cover the front (humaniod side) only, but the not the back.

MASKS:  At this point, it is important to make a distinction about masks.  We will be utilizing masks in the production.  In some tribes, the use of masks is a sacred matter, not to be handled lightly at all.  In fact, among the Iroquois of Northern New York State, the "False Face Societies" have stringent rules about the making and care of masks, which are believed to hold curing and other powers.  The Lenape have a limited mask tradition.  (Visit the Design Images page to see some samples.) As far as carved faces in the Big House, Speck says, "The concept defined for us in several sources of information, including the living teachers, shows that the carved representations are portrayals of the spirit-forces (manitowuk [plural]).  They are not worshiped as objects.  They stand as concrete representations of the spirit-forces as something to look at, to focus attention upon while the mind is centered on the abstraction."   However, among the Lenape, there are a few ceremonies where masks hold significance.  These include Mesing^w, Corn Harvest masks, and the fetishes of the Doll Dance Ceremonies.  We will not use the masks utilized in those ceremonies.  Mesing^w ("Living Solid Face), pictured below, is worn by a special dancer who is said to become possessed by the spirit while he or she wears the mask.


Speck talks about masks found in the Big House itself:  "In the present text we are taught, as the followers of the native religion of the Big House are, that the manitu are in most cases 'grandfathers' and in others 'elder brothers' and include the wild animals, trees, sun, moon, stars, thunders, and other natural forces with deistic traits.   The carved faces in the Big House represent them collectively, except for the larger images on the center post which represent the Supreme manitu, the Creator."    I was pleasantly surprised to read that only the mask on the center post of the Big House represents the Supreme manitu and holds special significance in ceremonies. The 12 other masks on the walls surrounding the Big House space represent spirit-forces or manitu (See the image below).

I don't want to use the Supreme manitu as a character in the play, because he has a special meaning in ceremonies and rites.  But the mask design from the Manitu shown above is different. This is a generalized representation of the minor spirit-forces found in the Lenape hierarchy of spirits.  These 12 masks represent the minor manitu collectively/generally and are all painted half red and half black when they appear on the Big House wall posts.  However, we are representing specific minor manitu. So we will color the masks in the coloring of the specific animal/plant/force they each represent. We will also attach items to the masks (feathers, leaves, etc) to clarify who each creature is.

Below are mask designs for Oberon and Titania


MAKE-UP:  When the mask is removed, the spirits will wear face paint found in social dance--again something that conveys the character of the creature as nearly as possible. We will not use ceremonial face paint. Images of the social face paint appear below:


For Titania, and Oberon, we will try to use the dance leader stick (shown in the costume drawing near the top) as a sort of wand with which they wield their leadership.

MUSIC/DANCE:  Although we might have felt free to choreograph our own dances for the spirits (since they are spirits and not human), we still felt it would be desireable to choreograph the dances in the style of the Lenape.  We obtained an audio and a video tape of authentic Lenape social dance songs, and we have adapted two of them to the etherial style of the rest of the Native American music we're using (which is popular in Native American sections of CD stores across the country).  After this work, the songs sound like the rest of the show.  The base melodies of the songs have not been changed, although some of repeats and sections have been removed for the sake of time.   The Shakespearean words have been attached to these two songs, and the use of the Shakespearean words was approved by the Tribal Council of the Oklahoma Lenape. 

In one of our interpretive choices, the female spirits, who are at war with the male spirits when they sing the lullaby to Titania, will sing their own song.  In Lenape tradition, women sing in very few songs (Go Get 'Em Dance is one).  Most of the time, men sing.  However, these characters are not women but spirits, and as spirits are higher than humans, the interpretive choice has been made to have the women sing.

As much as possible, the dances done in Midsummer will be traditional Lenape in style.  We wish the share Lenape traditions with our audience while telling the story Shakespeare wrote too.  The two dances will be a Woman Dance (for Titania's train) and a Lead Dance at the end (involving both sexes of spirits).  These dances will serve a functional purpose in the plot of the play.  As I said, these are not ceremonial dances but merely social dances of the Lenape.  We do not wish to infringe on sacred traditions.  And we are basing them on actual dances as videotaped in Tulsa a few years back. 

So, these are some of the reasons behind the design choices we made.  If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me at gbugala@umich.edu.

SOURCES:

http://www.angelfire.com/nj/becjosh/mesignw.html

http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/5th/namyth/99mythh/almyth.htm

http://members.tripod.com/~lenapelady/dances_table.html

AUDIO TAPE:  Dances of the Lenape: Volume 2, recorded by Jim Rementer, a Touching Leaves production.

VIDEO TAPE:  Demonstration of Lenape Dance given by Oklahoma Delaware Tribe in Tulsa, OK, 2000.

Interviews with Evan Pritchard, author of "No Word for Time" and author of upcoming book on native americans on Manhattan and vicinity.

Interviews with Jim Rementer, Language Preservation and Audio Visual Director, Oklahoma Delaware Tribe of Indians.

Interviews with Mike Pace, Economic Development Director, Oklahoma Delaware Tribe of Indians.

Authentic Indian designs : 2500 illustrations from Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology / edited by Maria Naylor. Published New York : Dover Publications, c1975. Description xxii, 219 p. : chiefly ill. ; 28 cm.

Art of the American Indian frontier : the Chandler-Pohrt Collection / David W. Penney ; with essays by Richard A. Pohrt, Milford G. Chandler, and George P. Horse Capture. Author Penney, David W. Published [Detroit] : Detroit Institute of Arts ; Seattle : University of Washington Press, c1992. Description 368 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.

THE CULTURE AND ACCULTURATION OF THE DELAWARE INDIANS. Author Newcomb, William W. (William Wilmon), 1921- Published 1953. Description 304 p.

Homes and haunts of the Indians, by Albert H. Heusser. Author Heusser, Albert H. (Albert Henry), 1886-1929. Edition Edition of 1923. Published Paterson, N. J., Braen-Heusser publishing co. [c1923] Description 4 p. L., 110 p. incl. illus., 12 pl. front., 2 pl. 23 cm.

Ritual of the wind : North American Indian ceremonies, music, and dance / Jamake Highwater. Author Highwater, Jamake. Edition [New and rev. ed.]. Published New York : A. Van der Marck Editions, c1984. Description 200 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.

A study of the Delaware Indian big house ceremony, in native text dictated by Witapanóxwe, by Frank G. Speck. Author Speck, Frank Gouldsmith, 1881-1950. Published Harrisburg [Pennsylvania historical commission] 1931. Description 4 p. L., 5-192 p. illus. (incl. ports) col. plates. 24 cm.

Oklahoma Delaware ceremonies, feasts and dances, by Frank G. Speck ... Author Speck, Frank Gouldsmith, 1881-1950. Published Philadelphia, The American philosophical society, 1937. Description viii, 161 p. front. (port.) illus., plates, fold. tab. 23 1/2cm.

Religion and ceremonies of the Lenape, by Mark R. Harrington. Author Harrington, M. R. (Mark Raymond), 1882-1971. Published New York, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1921. Description 249 p. col. front., illus., ix pl. (2 col.; incl. plan) 18 cm.

The grandfathers speak : native American folk tales of the Lenapé people / collected and written by Hìtakonanu’laxk (Tree Beard). Author Hìtakonanulaxk. Published New York : Interlink Books, 1994. Description x, 134 p. ; 22 cm.

Songs of our Grandfathers: Music of the Unami Delaware Indians / by Adams, Robert H. MA Thesis University of Washington, pp 106-141.