Note from the Director

William Thomas Hodgson, Director
Pronouns: He/She/They 

Shakespeare is the most produced playwright in the world. Throughout history, and still today. While it’s an astounding accomplishment, the notion that a singular pen monopolizes our collective storytelling conflicts with my convictions on diversity and representation. Being employed by the man for so long can make me feel torn, but honestly... I do love Shakespeare.

Not the man himself (or men/woman/folx, tbh, I don’t care too much), but this tome of poetry that has been passed down through generations. Of course, he’s not the only poet worthy of teaching us about ourselves (support new plays!), but I find immense power in the fact that we have curated, invested in and kept sacred this collection of writings. I give pause to think of how these words have been shipped across the globe, but we’re left with a powerful world-wide-web that can cross language barriers, ideological divisions, and chronology: a Rosetta Stone representing universality in the human condition.

The spectrum of emotion in Shakespeare’s anthology is made only more profound by the way they resurface- still recognizable, but transformed. Some strange cohesional magic happens when an ancient tradition is malleable enough to reflect the nuances of our fast evolving lives and sensibilities. I’m a sucker for great lyrical composition. It’s not just the gorgeous assemblage of words on the page that made me fall in love with Shakespeare. It’s the countless artists, scholars, and activists who have left their prints on my understanding of this poetry. Certain adaptations, edits, and recontextualizations have lodged in my dramaturgical understanding of a play, forever illuminating a new aspect, making it more personal. Any one of us may understand Shakespeare better than the monarch under whose aegis his plays were written, because good theater becomes great when it resonates with you, a topic on which you are the authority. Shakespeare is transformative when it’s about you and me, and the humanity between us.

So flip forward through your program and meet the actors and designers, artists and administrators that have together composed this Shakespearean love letter to you, our community. All respect paid to the actual author, but these hearts and minds have authored new gifts from his beloved script. If you’re lucky you will notice some omissions, slight reinterpretations, some broken conventions, and you will leave wondering at the same beautiful, challenging, complex, sexy, atoning ritual that will always be at the heart of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

We’re a few months off from actual midsummer, too early for the rites of May, but we are living in an imbalanced world. So, thank you for being in observance as our fairies sing harmony to the world: to all of its misunderstandings, to its abject (and sometimes unwittingly hilarious) suffering, and to its moments of joyous release.