Midland Center for the Arts CST - June 2026
About the Show
Shakespeare’s most enchanting comedy! Set in mid-1990s New York City, this fresh take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows runaway lovers, amateur actors, and mischievous fairies as they collide where love, logic, and identity begin to unravel. With 90s music, moonlit mischief, and a world where nothing is quite what it seems, this whimsical comedy becomes a joyful celebration of transformation and the strange spell of love.
Why This Play Now?
Many of Shakespeare’s works have resonated historically with LGBTQ+ communities, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is no exception. Hermia is told who she is and is not allowed to date based on what her father finds acceptable. Helena and Demetrius’ love story is a reverse of the typical gender dynamics of the period. The Faeries operate under their own rules of love, strange and delightful. Not to mention the history of genderplay in Shakespeare, dating all the way back to his original troupe of male actors playing female roles. This adaptation has been specifically curated to highlight these moments of queerness in Shakespeare and to celebrate them. By taking Midsummer and setting it in the 1990s, there is a chance to show how the struggles of love, freedom, and coming of age are as relevant now as it was in the 1990s as it was in the 1590s. This production is a celebration of Shakespeare, of the LGTBTQ+ community, and is a reminder that love will, in fact, always win.
Direction and Themes
This adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is inspired by the mid-1990s clubbing scenes in New York City and San Francisco. Midsummer is a show all about running away in order to pursue a freer love. No where is that more relevant than these cities in the ‘90s. They were safe havens, small pockets of a country where BIPOC and queer individuals could escape the drowning expectations of the United States. The makeup, the dancing, the self-expression, the drag, the ballrooms, all of it was, for them, a forest to run away to for the purpose of finding authentic love when the people at home don’t offer it to them. For the Athenians in Midsummer, nothing is more relatable. As Athens law and overbearing parents try to govern these youths to marry who authority thinks is right, the young lovers run away to find their truth in the woods. Queer love reigns true, and it wins in the end. Add with this the otherworldly and enticing faerie realm, which mirrors the club kids and drag queens, and mechanicals who offer an outcast perspective, the 1990s city life offers a setting that supports Midsummer’s text while being accessible and intriguing to new audiences.