Actor Colman Domingo appears in some of the buzziest projects of the past year. In addition to playing “Mister” in the 2023 musical adaptation of The Color Purple, he’s up for Best Actor at next week’s Oscar’s ceremony for his portrayal of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the Netflix film Rustin. He’s also an Emmy winner for his gripping embodiment of a recovering drug addict in the HBO drama Euphoria.
More: Actor Colman Domingo on Rustin and The Color Purple (The Treatment, 2024)
For his Treat, Domingo reflects on his enduring fascination with William Shakespeare's complex and dexterous use of language in his plays. Recalling his experience of playing the lover Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Domingo underscores the enduring theme of love’s tumultuous nature, as verbalized in one of Lysander's monologues. Domingo resonates with the depiction of love's trials amidst the enchanted forest setting, likening it to a journey of self-discovery and growth.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I always go back to Shakespeare because I think the way that Shakespeare can tell a story with one line or build upon a story is always beautiful to me.
I did this Midsummer Night's Dream, many years ago, at California Shakespeare Theatre. When I was a young actor coming of age in San Francisco, I just would stay in rehearsal rooms that I wasn't even called for. I was fascinated on how to use this language. It was something I wasn't afraid of. It was learning something that I knew would have a great impact on me.
Shakespeare, once you memorize it, it's in there. It's just in there. I remember Mercutio's monologues, you name it. It's all in there. But there's one in particular because it's about the highs and lows of love:
'For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear, by tale or history. The course of true love never did run smooth; but, either it was different in blood or else misgraffed in respect of years. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice. War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound. Swift as a shadow, short as any dream. Brief as the lightning in the collied night; That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth. And ‘ere a man hath power to say “Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up. So quick bright things come to confusion.’ - Lysander in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
It’s that confusion of young love. These two are thinking about love and the cost of love, and is it available? But also the brightness and the quickness of it? And then sometimes how it goes away. That stays with me. I think it's just a complicated thought in theory about love and the possibility of it.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)
They mentioned ‘war, death, or sickness’ in the middle of this fantastical world of being in the forest. But that's what I love about Midsummer in particular, because you have to go into the forest, into the fairyland, and to come out and emerge again anew. There's fairies sprinkling things or really bringing out what's actually buried inside through these hallucinogenics. It says a lot. I guess they were dropping acid back then. But it's fantastic because it's like how we have to be willing to go into… You know, Miyazaki does that — you have to go into these fantastical places to find out the truth about who you are and come out again renewed.
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