 
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Richard E.T. White
[read the interview with Richard E.T. White]
July 22 - August 30, 2009. Performed in the outdoor Festival Glen.
“Lovers, to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time." - Theseus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V
Production Co-Sponsors
Gail Michaelis-Ow and George Ow
Barry Swenson Builder
Shakespeare’s brilliant and popular comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has something in it for everyone. The play is full of magic, music, humor, romance, and spectacle. The time in which the play is set signaled the arrival of summer for the Elizabethans, which they believed brought on revels of enchantment, witchcraft, and even madness. Everyone is possessed in one way or another in this ethereal comedy, from the gods of the earth (which disrupts the natural order of things) to the human beings that inhabit that earth (which disrupts the communal order of things). Actors are enchanted while rehearsing a play, lovers are tricked into shifting their fidelity, and the gods of nature spin magical fantasies in order to get what they yearn for.
Director's Notes:
"Like any dream, the play is full of inexplicable but oddly resonant images. Our job as the artists who must interpret it is to embrace its contradictions, and render them as vividly as possibly, and share with the audience a view of the hazards of human excess that is as resonant today as when it was written.”
Richard E. T. White is chair of the Theater Department at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts. He joined the department in 1995 after a three-year residency in Japan, where he taught at Toin and Gakushuin universities and was resident director at Tokyo’s Theatre Company Subaru.
Performance Sponsors
Artwork Conversion Software (Steve Di Bartolomeo & Kerry Atchison)
DragonsPearl
Robin and Douglas Engfer
Eventscapes
Good Times
Professor Thorne Lay
KAZU
KPIG/KBOQ/KCDU
KWAV
Gail Michaels-Ow, George Ow and Barry Swenson Builders
Patrick Reilly, Diane Lamotte, and Librete Reilly
Rotary Club of Santa Cruz Sunrise
Don and Diana Rothman
Safeway Soquel
SC Sentinel
Schipper Design
Jean Shimogushi
Robert and Joan Shomler
Audrey Stanley & Tilly Shaw
Universal Audio
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