ABOUT THE plays

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Among Shakespeare’s most beloved and fantastical comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is rightly a perennial favorite for a midsummer night performance! Outside of Athens, a magical woodland kingdom finds four runaway lovers, a traveling troupe of bungling actors, and a mischievous company of fairies set on a collision course. In true Shakespearean fashion, identities get scrambled, affections get misdirected, and merry mix-ups abound. To quote Lysander, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Packed with beloved characters like Puck, Bottom and Titania and endlessly quotable lines, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is sure to find our audience laughing and falling in love under a canopy of stars.

Measure for Measure

Called away on a mysterious diplomatic mission, Duke Vincentio places his puritanical and despotic deputy Angelo in charge of Vienna. Seizing the reins of power, Angelo sentences Claudio to death when it is discovered that Claudio’s fiancee is with child out of wedlock. When novice nun Isabella, who is also Claudio’s sister, begs for mercy for her brother, Angelo agrees to a pardon — in exchange for her chastity. Unbeknownst to everyone, Vincentio has disguised himself as a friar to observe his deputy’s nefarious misdeeds. Can Claudio be saved and Isabella’s virtue preserved in time? In this dark and still-timely comedy, Shakespeare tackles the intersections of political power, morality, religious hypocrisy, love, and sex.