A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Rêve (Fren.)

/ʁɛv/   verb: to dream.

At first glance, perhaps Shakespearean comedies and the early rave scene don’t seem to have much in common.

In his comedies, Shakespeare often utilized the notion of a “green world”—a form of the natural world to which his human characters ventured in order to escape from their civilized lives. In this natural world unhindered by the laws of man, true feelings could be unmasked and problems solved in ways that carried over back into the real world.

From their inception in the fields of England in the early 1990s, raves served a similar purpose. They existed as an escape—where the younger generation left the rules of their parents behind and chased after four ideals: Peace. Love. Unity. Respect.Eventually even the adults got in on the act—normalizing the rave and using it as a means to simply leave behind the burdens and responsibilities of the work-week and “have a good night.”

Yet at their cores, both the rave and the green world are a space between—where the social hierarchies between us all get to be left at the door. Between experience and desire, between constraint and freedom, between who you haveto be and who you want to be—this is the place that one’s true self can be really be present.

“Trip away, make no stay; met me all by break of day.”

Photo Credit: Aaron Wallis, Southern Arkansas University.