Nathan Winkelstein’s 2020 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sets the events of the play in 1930s New Orleans, in aiming to relate Elizabethan playgoers’ belief in fairies to today’s audiences; on the subject of choosing this particular setting, Winkelstein asserts it as, “[a] time close enough to ours to latch on to, but one where magic (voodoo) lives side by side with ‘civilization’ as we recognize it (the city itself).”
The production previously toured and was filmed for streaming distribution in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic; typically, the American Shakespeare Center’s production “do it with the lights on”, using universal lighting, with both the house and stage lights on, in which actors and audience members can both see each other, in attempt to recreate the theatrical conditions of Shakespeare’s time. Under filmed conditions, actors, instead of addressing seated audience members, moved to directly address the camera and audience members sitting at home.
The production is embellished with music, pared down to ninety minutes of Shakespeare’s spoken text and then accompanied with songs—both existing popular songs, such as “Jolene” and “Love the One You’re With”, and newly composed ones of Dream’s original text, with actors performing both instrument and voice. In the Blackfriars Playhouse’s setting, “a large wooden platform unadorned by fixed sets or scenery,” the text of Dream shines, allowing for a traditional, yet simultaneously refreshingly earnest exploration of the Athenian lovers’ plight—Mia Wurgaft’s Helena particularly wins hearts in the breakdown of her unique and endearing relationships with each of the other three lovers.
The meta-theatrical elements of the text of Dream fall flat at times—it is possible that the play-within-a-play is in fact too professional of an offering from the amateur mechanicals, the effective props-based comedy done more out of a sense of duty.
However, the exploration of the implications of meta-theatre in a medium that is meant to function as both theatre and filmed theatre bring new meanings to the text in the time of COVID-19. The edited script deftly conveys the plots and nuances of Dream while making the play wholly appropriate for children and families; fulfilling the promise of “brisk pacing, judicious cutting, and continuous dramatic action,” Winkelstein’s Dream skirts the carnal for a more lighthearted exploration of desire as PG-rated want and love.
- Director: Nathan Winkelstein
- Choreographer: Nancy Anderson
- Tour Manager: Thomas J. Coppola
- Fight Captain: Madeline Calais
- Asst. Tour Manager: Colin Mackey
- Music Director: Andrew Tung
- Technical Director: Tracie Steger Skipper
- Asst. Music Director: Mia Wurgaft
- Fight Director: John Paul Scheidler
- Stage Manager: Thomas J. Coppola
- Asst. to the Fight Director: Hannah Roccisano
- Properties Master: Lauren Ballard
- Assistant Stage Manager: Colin Mackey
- Costume Designer: Nicole Wee
- Cast: Sara Linares (Hermia), Mia Wurgaft (Helena), Michael Morét (Demetrius), Andrew Tung (Lysander, Snug the Joiner), Topher Embrey (Bottom), Madeline Calais (Puck), Andrea Bellamore (Titania, Hippolyta), Chris Bellinger (Theseus, Oberon), Alexis Baigue (Francis Flute, First Fairy, Peaseblossom), Kenn Hopkins, Jr. (Egeus, Snout, Mustardseed), Sophia Beratta (Quince, Cobweb)
