A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Written by William Shakespeare
Music by Fitz Patton
SALT Award
Director of the Year
Winner
SALT Award
Production of the Year
Winner
Syracuse Stage & Syracuse University Drama
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Scenic Design by Andrew Boyce
Costume Design by Jess Ford
Lighting Design by Thom Weaver
Sound Design by Fitz Patton
Photos by Michael Davis
A Note from BillMy production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a co-production between Syracuse Stage and Syracuse University Drama, marked the beginning of an important artistic chapter for me. Artistic Director Timothy Bond, whom I had first worked with at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as the Phil Killian Directing Fellow, invited me to direct the first Shakespeare production of his tenure at Syracuse Stage.
The partnership between Stage and Drama is one of the most exciting and valuable models I know of in the American theatre. It brings together a cast of professional actors and actors from Syracuse’s BFA program, so that students work shoulder to shoulder with working professionals on a major LORT production, and professionals work alongside the next generation of artists. It joins a professional theatre with the intellectual power of a research university, and the result is greater than either could have produced alone.
I was and remain fascinated by Midsummer as a play about love at different stages of life: the volatility and abandon of young love, love tested by circumstance and the pressures of the world, and mature love that has endured disappointment, change, and time and emerged richer for the journey. Beneath the comedy and theatrical magic, I wanted the production to ask what it means not simply to fall in love, but to remain in love: to survive its transformations and continue choosing one another.
The dazzling physical production, designed by Andrew Boyce, Jess Ford, Fitz Patton, and Thom Weaver, mirrored the wild anarchy and elegance of Shakespeare’s text.
The production was deeply personal to me, because I was preparing to propose to my partner. It went on to receive Syracuse Area Live Theater (S.A.L.T.) Awards for Outstanding Director of the Year and Outstanding Production of a Play, affirming a collaboration and an artistic home that would become enormously important in my life and work.
