Director -- Lane Davies
This production marked my tenth time directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, clearly one of my favorite plays in the Shakespeare canon. And, though I am a traditionalist at heart, this time I felt a need to try something new. I could spend pages justifying why I set the play in the Deep South of the 1930’s, but to be perfectly honest—it just seemed like fun. The simple fact is, the play is so universal in its themes and its characters are so timeless, that it doesn’t really matter where or when it’s set, as long as the director respects Shakespeare’s intent—a light-hearted look at love and conflict on several different levels.

We visited ‘Duke’ Theseus and his strong-willed fiancé Hippolyta, along with the four hot-blooded young lovers who manifest Love’s more confusing aspects; Oberon and Titania, spirits (from the War of Northern Aggression) haunting the ruins of the old Duke’s Oak plantation, and, of course, the well-meaning but inept ‘rude mechanicals’, 1930 equivalents of ‘Larry the Cable Guy’.