Love, laughter and absurdity are well-known staples of the romantic comedy genre, and William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is no exception – despite its high-sounding thee’s and thou’s.

“It’s very much a romantic comedy,” said Karla Kash, director of ISU Theatre’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which will be showing this weekend and the following weekend at Fisher Theater. “It has all of those same types of elements of girl wants boy, and boy wants girl – but they can’t have each other for whatever reason.”

There’s certainly enough drama in the story. A girl being pressured to marry against her will, lovers running away together, misunderstandings, enchantments, fairies – enough to make the average viewer’s head spin.

Beyond all that , and underneath all the complicated twists and rhythms of Shakespearean dialogue, there is a surprisingly modern feel to it, Kash said.

Sometimes, she said, the play reminds her of the MTV show “The Real World” because of its off-color jokes.

“It’s really uproarious,” she said. “It’s really a good time.”

To ensure that the old-fashioned language wouldn’t be an obstacle in pulling off the play’s humor, Kash had the actors take a class that addressed how to approach Shakespeare from an actor’s perspective.

Shakespeare is an English class staple, and Kash assumed her students had already been exposed to his work in that context. But reading and performing are different worlds, she said.

William Mort, playing the role of Francis Flute and senior in performing arts, said he thought the class was an excellent idea.

“The good thing about taking a class is that everyone got their lines down pretty early,” he said. “We had all of November’s rehearsals to just play.”

Many funny moments erupted during rehearsal time – helped, to be sure, by the nature of the script. Mort said he and the rest of the cast came up with many hilarious ways of portraying the content.

A lot of them were “too extreme” and weren’t ever incorporated into the actual performance, but it was still a good time, he said.

“The funny thing about Shakespeare that a lot of people don’t understand is that the humor is essentially the same [as humor today],” he said.

Mort said his favorite part of the whole experience was working with the other students, and said he’s likely to miss them when this semester finally comes to a close.

“We’ve had so much fun doing it,” he said.