June 16 – November 29, 2015
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare casts a theatrical spell powerful enough to make audiences of all ages believe in anything. This mischievous comedy of lovers, heroes, fairies, and rude mechanicals is his tribute to humankind’s power of imagination, and reveals that the “course of true love” can alter with just one touch of magic.
James Keegan in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
The cast of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
John Harrell and Sarah Fallon in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
Sarah Fallon and Gregory Jon Phelps in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
Chris Johnston, Stephanie Holladay Earl, and Patrick Midgley in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
Patrick Midgley, Abbi Hawk, and Chris Johnston in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
John Harrell and Rick Blunt in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
John Harrell in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
The cast of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
Rick Blunt in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Photo by LINDSEY WALTERS. 2015.
Cast
THIS SEASON: Antonio in The Tempest; Cleon, Simonides, Ensemble in Pericles; Prospero in Une Tempête
More than 186 roles in 101 productions, including Volumnia in Coriolanus, Olivia in Twelfth Night; Regan in King Lear; Margaret in both Henry VI, Part 1 and Part 2; Isabella in Measure for Measure;…
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: More than 137 roles in 113 productions, including the title roles in Coriolanus; King Lear; Edward II; Timon of Athens; The Merchant of Venice; Pericles; Doctor Faustus; …
This Season: Alice Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor; Lady Percy, Prince John in Henry IV, Part 1; Courtney Ash in Anne Page Hates Fun…
Stephanie Holladay Earl is an accomplished actor, director, choreographer, & educator with over 15 years of experience, known for her impactful work.
Chris Johnston has over 20 years of theatre experience and more than 120 productions at the American Shakespeare Center.
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: 27 seasons and over 200 roles including Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2; Brutus in Julius Caesar; Iago in Othello; Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern …
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: More than 137 roles in 113 productions, including the title roles in Coriolanus; King Lear; Edward II; Timon of Athens; The Merchant of Venice; Pericles; Doctor Faustus; …
THIS SEASON: Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Antipholus of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors.
Mercutio and Montague in Romeo and Juliet and Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors; Fight Captain
More than 186 roles in 101 productions, including Volumnia in Coriolanus, Olivia in Twelfth Night; Regan in King Lear; Margaret in both Henry VI, Part 1 and Part 2; Isabella in Measure for Measure;…
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: 27 seasons and over 200 roles including Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2; Brutus in Julius Caesar; Iago in Othello; Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern …
THIS SEASON: Host, Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor; Earl of Westmoreland, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV, Part 1…
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: 27 seasons and over 200 roles including Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2; Brutus in Julius Caesar; Iago in Othello; Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern …
THIS SEASON: Mark Antony in JULIUS CAESAR, Mrs. Bennet & Lady Catherine de Bourgh in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Egeus & Flute in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
THIS SEASON: Host, Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor; Earl of Westmoreland, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV, Part 1…
Stephanie Holladay Earl is an accomplished actor, director, choreographer, & educator with over 15 years of experience, known for her impactful work.
Mercutio and Montague in Romeo and Juliet and Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors; Fight Captain
THIS SEASON: Antonio in The Tempest; Cleon, Simonides, Ensemble in Pericles; Prospero in Une Tempête
More than 186 roles in 101 productions, including Volumnia in Coriolanus, Olivia in Twelfth Night; Regan in King Lear; Margaret in both Henry VI, Part 1 and Part 2; Isabella in Measure for Measure;…
Artistic Team
Ralph is Co-Founder and Director of Mission of the ASC, Emeritus Professor of English at James Madison University, and currently Gonder Professor of Shakespeare at Mary Baldwin University, where he …
Stage Manager/Assistant Director
Lauren is a proud company member of The Keegan Theatre in Washington, DC where she has worked as a stage manager, assistant director and dramaturg. Her Keegan credits include Hair, …
Jenny McNee joined the ASC in 2002 after studying in Richmond, Charlottesville, and Edinburgh, Scotland. She has designed and built nearly 100 shows (60 resident and touring shows, 35 holiday …
Properties Master
Chris has been designing and building props for the ASC since 2012. In that time, he’s provided props for over 60 productions, including (from Shakespeare): The Merchant of Venice; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Cymbeline; King John; Love’s Labour’s Lost; Twelfth Night; Julius Caesar; Henry VIII; The Two Noble Kinsmen; Romeo and Juliet; All’s Well That Ends Well; Troilus and Cressida; Othello; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Henry IV, Part 1; As You Like It; Timon of Athens; Macbeth; The Comedy of Errors; Pericles; Hamlet; Much Ado about Nothing; The Taming of the Shrew; Antony and Cleopatra; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Winter’s Tale; Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Henry V; The Tempest; Measure for Measure; and King Lear.
Stephanie Holladay Earl is an accomplished actor, director, choreographer, & educator with over 15 years of experience, known for her impactful work.
Mercutio and Montague in Romeo and Juliet and Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors; Fight Captain
Chris Johnston has over 20 years of theatre experience and more than 120 productions at the American Shakespeare Center.
THIS SEASON: Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Antipholus of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors.
PREVIOUSLY WITH ASC: More than 137 roles in 113 productions, including the title roles in Coriolanus; King Lear; Edward II; Timon of Athens; The Merchant of Venice; Pericles; Doctor Faustus; …
Understudy
This is Symmonie’s seventh season as troupe understudy, having previously understudied more than 300 roles in 29 productions during the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Summer and Fall Seasons, and the …
Understudy/Production Intern
Molly Beth Seremet holds an M.Litt/MFA in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University and an M.Res in Creative Research from Roehampton University. Recent directing credits include Der Wal: A …
Stuff that happens during the play
- Theseus, Duke of Athens, plans his marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.
- Egeus interrupts to complain that his daughter Hermia has fallen in love with Lysander. Theseus orders Hermia to obey her father and marry Demetrius; otherwise, she will be killed or sent to a nunnery.
- Hermia and Lysander plan to escape to the woods, get married, and live off money from Lysander’s rich aunt.
- Hermia’s friend Helena, who loves Demetrius, reveals the plan to him. Demetrius chases Hermia and Lysander into the woods. Helena chases Demetrius into the woods.
- In the woods, Oberon, the fairy king, and Titania, the fairy queen, quarrel over the possession of a changeling boy.
- Oberon sends Puck to put a spell on Titania so that she will fall in love with the first creature she sees when she awakes.
- Nick Bottom and his fellow workmen (“rude mechanicals”) come into the woods to rehearse a play for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding celebration.
- Puck places an ass’s head upon Bottom. Titania wakes and promptly falls in love.
- Oberon commands Puck to put a spell on Demetrius so that he falls in love with Helena; Puck, however, mistakes Lysander for Demetrius.
- Confusions, corrections, coupling, and play-going ensue.
FETCH ME TRIFLES
Like all plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a trifle. Even the greatest production of King Lear is no more than an entertainment — a make- believe experience that evaporates with the final bow. It may move us to pity and awe, but it does not cure the sick nor shelter the poor nor feed the hungry. A Midsummer Night’s Dream weighs even less than a King Lear and is more obviously a trifle.
Dream is about Shakespeare’s own trivial pursuit of making plays. He puts a play within the play in other works, but Dream is the only one in which he puts the rehearsal of a play as well. At that rehearsal in the center of this play Shakespeare brings together the supernatural and the human worlds and engineers the most unlikely romantic encounter in the history of theatre.
Hamlet explains grandly that the purpose of plays is to hold a mirror up to nature. Stupid Hamlet. Tell that to audiences enchanted to senselessness as they watch Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, make love to an ass-headed amateur thespian named Bottom.
Plays do something other than — more and less than — mirror nature. They are the mysterious human endeavor where our imaginations strut our dreams for the delight of others. Sound and fury for an hour (or two) to be heard no more … until of course the next play, when some other group of actors driven by the oddest of human needs reimagines another dream for another audience assembled to exercise the joy of imagination.
That joy is the subject of this play, not because Theseus gives a memorable speech about imagination, but because the play continually engages your effortless superpower to imagine. Titania refuses to give Oberon the little changeling boy — a character that Shakespeare has us only imagine — because his mother was her human companion who would, as she explains,
… sail upon the land
To fetch me trifles, and return again
As from a voyage rich with merchandise…
Rich trifles. That’s what plays are. We can live without them, but we don’t want to. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s perfect trifle.
RALPH ALAN COHEN
Director of Mission and Co-founder