NARRATOR：

Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor.

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

OK, let’s see, right …[reading] “Modern stagings of a Shakespearean classic.”

Well like I told you last week I think that’s a great topic for your paper.[questioning] So the title’ll be something like …

MALE STUDENT：

I’m not really sure. Probably something like “Twentieth-Century Stagings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

Yes. I like that: straightforward and to the point. So how’s the research going?

MALE STUDENT：

Well, that’s what I came to talk to you about.

I was wondering if you happened to have a copy of the Peter Brook production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in your video collection.

I’ve been looking for it everywhere, and… I’m having a really hard time tracking it down.

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

That’s because it doesn’t exist.

MALE STUDENT：

Huh! You mean in your collection, or at all?

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

I mean at all. That particular production was never filmed or recorded.

MALE STUDENT：

Oh no. I had no idea. From what I’ve read, that production, like, it influenced every other production of the play that came after it so … I just assumed it had been filmed or videotaped.

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

Oh, it definitely was a landmark production, and … it’s not like it ran for just a week, but either it was never filmed, or if it was, the film has been lost.

And it’s ironic because there’s even a film about the making of the production, but none of the production itself.

MALE STUDENT：

So now what do I do … if there’s no video … ?

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

Well, think about it. This is the most important twentieth-century staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, right?

MALE STUDENT：

But how can I write about Brook’s interpretation of the play if I can’t see his production?

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

Just because there’s no recording doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how it influenced other productions.

MALE STUDENT：

I guess there’s enough material around. But it’ll be a challenge.

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

True, but think about it: You’re writing about dramatic arts… the theater, and that’s the nature of theater isn’t it?

MALE STUDENT：

You mean because it’s live, when the performance is finished …

FEMALE PROFESSOR：

That’s it, unless it’s filmed, it’s gone! But that doesn’t mean we can’t study it.

And of course some students in this class are writing about productions in the nineteenth century…and there are no videos of those.

You know, one of the challenges for people who study theater is to find ways of talking about something that’s really so transient, about something that in a sense, doesn’t exist.