A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Julianna Rees, takes place in modern day San Francisco. Theseus, rather than conquering Hippolyta in war, acquires her prosperous but competing internet company through a hostile takeover, merging the two into a larger conglomerate. The Mechanicals are city workers, or blue collar workers, who seek personal expression through the arts. The lovers are blind to any danger beyond their own gilded neighborhood. They are seeking a possibility that hasn’t been invented yet, where they can choose for themselves whom they love. The fairies are those invisible to us on the streets.
Like the Mechanicals in the play, our actors offer the best of what they have prepared, rehearsing “most obscenely and courageously” so that our Midsummer Night’s Dream can reveal, entertain, instruct, and delight. “For anything can be amiss/When simpleness and beauty tender it”