"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is Shakespeare's most widely performed play, according to shakespeareances.com (a self-described online gathering place for "Shakespeare geeks") and one of his most popular. Just ask the versatile theatrical duo Josh Gladstone and Kate Mueth.
"This is one of our favorites, because it's just so much fun to work on," said Mr. Gladstone during a Zoom conversation, adding that when in 1997 he shifted from actor to producer-director, he made his directorial debut with the Bard's revered comedy as co-founder of the Hamptons Shakespeare Festival. "It's great to come back to it 25 years later with a whole new perspective on it."
Mr. Gladstone, Ms. Mueth, and the Neo-Political Cowgirls Dance Theater Collective have reimagined the play as "The Dreamer (A Midsummer Night's Dream as Seen Through the Eyes of a Young Girl)," which will begin a two-week Off Broadway run on Saturday at the HERE Arts Center in SoHo.
The couple began working on the play last year in anticipation of performing it in East Hampton's Herrick Park. That didn't pan out, but after selling out two workshops of it last July at Mulford Farm, they kept tinkering.
Ms. Mueth, said Mr. Gladstone, had the idea of seeing the play through the lens of "a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, coming to her sexual maturation, making the journey from young child into young woman . . . and looking at it through that woman’s lens has been a totally fresh way to approach this."
The production, which is directed by Mr. Gladstone and Ms. Mueth, utilizes dance, multi-genre music, and Shakespeare's text to explore themes of power, identity, love, transformation, and the intensity of society's patriarchal view of young people's high spirits.
The couple developed "The Dreamer" using the Globe Theatre's abridged version of the play. While "The Dreamer" mostly follows the text of the Globe version, there will be improvisation. "We're committed to the text," said Ms. Mueth, "but we're breathing life into it without being disrespectful. I think there's a very rich way we can dive into it with joy and with bravery and without kid gloves."
Mr. Gladstone discussed Shakespeare's many sources for the play, among them Ovid's "Metamorphoses," earlier Greek myths, and pre-Christian pagan symbols such as Puck the trickster.
"Looking at the symbols through this dream lens has been a fresh take on the play, and of course the poetry is there and it's as rich as ever," he said. "Using that lens allowed the actors great freedom in the rehearsal room to play, to create, to not be constrained by reason. They’re finding so much color in the text, that you wouldn’t know that this is some 400-year-old piece."
Ms. Mueth elaborated. "What does it feel like now to take these words and tear them open and to play in them and to revel in them? And also, what do they bring to us today for what we need as a culture, as a society? I think we need to be excavators in that regard."
The cast includes Dan Kelly, Max Samuels, Amanda Kristin Nichols, Stephanie Orta-Vázquez, Vanessa Lynah, Rhys Tivey, Vanessa Walters, Trevor Vaughn, Annie-Sage Whitehurst, Meaghan Roubichard, Alexandra Taylor, Violet Spann, Emma Engel, Mary Garrett Turner, Galia Calderon, and Gigi Grace.
Mr. Gladstone noted that the play will return to East Hampton during the summer, with performances at the Montauk Library and LTV. In addition, the actors and dancers will be in costume at LongHouse Reserve for that venue's summer benefit, whose theme is -- you guessed it -- "MidSummer Dream."
The performances in SoHo will take place through May 7 at 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesdays through Fridays. Tickets are $25, $15 for students and senior citizens.
