It is the burying of queerness in nature, like in the example above, that makes the Theatre and Performance Program’s 2025 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream so crucial. There’s two worlds that exist in the world of the play. The first one is the kingdom. This world is one of rigid structure, of buildings of colourless stone. There’s a lack of plant life, maybe excluding plants that have found small spaces and cracks to grow in. Although we may spend little time here, it’s evident that this is a place of order and structure. The other world that exists in this play is the green world. The green world is full of plants, growing in all sorts of directions, without boundaries. There are magical beings, like fairies. This world is beautiful, with growth and warm lighting. However, there’s also a sense of fear in this place, a lack of control. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe something people of the kingdom are really used to. People fear things that they cannot understand or control, so when something threatens their structure, they do not want to accept it. Just as society destroys natural life when it begins to interfere with our buildings and spaces, society also represses the existence of queer people because they threaten the heteronormative structure, just like Hermia and Lysandra threaten the kingdom's structure.​

​

We see Hermia and Lysandra being rejected by the heteronormative structure of the Kingdom, where there are man made buildings, a lack of colour, and everything is polished and structured. They are essentially told that they cannot love each other or else they will be killed. In an act of desperation to be with each other, they end up in the forest on their journey to get married and be together. It is only here, when they are in the forest surrounded by nature, that they feel free to love each other. It is also here where their love for one another is accepted by the Kingdom, when they are eventually found in the forest. A space where there is colour, plants and trees growing in all directions wherever they please, a lack of containment and repression. The connection between Hermia and Lysandra’s queer love story and the setting of the green world sends a message that queerness is natural, and exists everywhere throughout the natural world.

 

In the Theatre and Performance program’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are a lot of different aspects of the play that incorporate the concept of structure vs. nature. The fairies wear little objects and pieces of the structured world that they have found, and grow over them with plants, transforming them into something new and different. The idea that as much as the structured world tries to control things, the green world will always find spaces to grow and flourish, connects to the concept that no matter how hard the normative world tries to dismiss queerness as unnatural and abnormal, queer people have always and will always find spaces to exist, and hopefully change the societal norms we currently exist within. The green world in this production represents the failure of repressing queerness. It will always exist, since it is a natural aspect of life, and nature will always find ways to grow and flourish.