Interview: For Steven Maler, Shakespeare on the Common is A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

For many Bostonians, a midsummer night’s dream involves relaxing on a blanket or sitting in a chaise lounge and enjoying free Shakespeare on the Common.

For Steven Maler, founding artistic director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” holds special significance as the first free outdoor Shakespeare production he directed with CSC, in 1996 in Copley Square. This summer Maler is again directing the comedy – through August 9 at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common, in partnership with the City of Boston’s Parks and Recreation Department and the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture – to mark CSC’s 30th anniversary.

Written between 1594 and 1596 and one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, the Athens-set “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” tells a tale of young lovers drawn together and then ripped apart by forces beyond their control. The CSC mounting of the comedy moves to a neon-lit festival escape, where rules are replaced by self-expression. According to the company, the air will be filled with music, mystery, and mischief as Puck and his fairy band move like shadowy DJs of fate, remixing hearts with a single drop of enchanted nectar while the festival grounds bubble with temptation, transformation, and the excitement of love and community.

As he does virtually every year with Shakespeare on the Common, Maler has assembled a cast of some of greater Boston’s most respected actors, including Michael Broadhurst as Flute, Annika Burley as Helena, Meghan Carey as Hermia, Nick Cearley (NYC’s The Skivvies) as Puck/Philostrate, Nora Eschenheimer as Hippolyta/Titania, De’Lon Grant, in his CSC debut, as Theseus/Oberon, Jack Greenberg as Demetrius, Jaime José Hernández as Lysander, Karen MacDonald as Quince, Paul Melendy as Bottom, and Brooks Reeves as Egeus/Starveling.

Maler is the 2016 recipient of the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence as well as Norton awards for his CSC productions of “Twelfth Night” and “All’s Well That Ends Well.” He has also directed “American Voices,” a series of one-night play readings at Boston’s Shubert Theatre which starred Paul Rudd, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Blair Brown, Brooke Adams, Tony Shalhoub, Max von Essen, Jeffrey Donovan, Leslie Uggams, Denis O’Hare, and Charles Busch, among others.

His non-CSC efforts have included directing the 2000 feature film “The Autumn Heart,” starring Tyne Daly and Ally Sheedy, which was selected for the highly competitive Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Choice Award at the Nantucket Film Festival. Director of the 2023 off-Broadway production of Anthony Rapp’s “Without You,” which also played London, Edinburgh, Toronto, and Seoul as well as the Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, Maler also helmed last season’s Boston Lyric Opera production of “Macbeth” at the Emerson Colonial Theatre.

These summer days, however, find Maler – a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University – back on Boston Common with his fingers crossed for good weather.

He was in his trailer on the Common recently when he took a Zoom call to discuss “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” CSC’s 30th anniversary, and more.

What were you up to before you founded Commonwealth Shakespeare Company?

I was born in Memphis, grew up in Nashville, and went to school at UNC Chapel Hill, where I had the pleasure of being part of a theater company in residence while I was going through college. It was amazing to be a young actor and to be even a small part of a professional company at work, and to help on the technical side of many shows, too. It wasn’t a Shakespeare company, but they did do Shakespeare, and some adventurous productions of it at that, which were quite inspiring. And then, after I finished college, I moved to Boston and worked for a couple of years as an actor around town.

What was it like being an actor in Boston back then?

At that point, as you know, the theater scene was quite small here, and I found that there weren’t enough opportunities, so I started working at the American Repertory Theater in just about the lowest position on the totem pole. The first thing that I did with the A.R.T. was presented at the Majestic Theater, pre-renovation. It was a Bob Wilson production of a Philip Glass opera with a libretto by David Henry Hwang – a one-act melodrama with music called “10,000 Airplanes on the Roof.”

Did you play a character in that show?

No, I was a fly man on that – flying scenery in and out. And then after I did that production, which had a summer run, I heard that the A.R.T. was looking for seasonal staff and they hired me to work backstage on the running crew.

What are your earliest memories of your time at the A.R.T.?

I kind of grew up, really, at the A.R.T., running through stage management, production management, and then the two-year training program for directors that they had at that time, which was sunsetted a long time ago.

Your career with the A.R.T. continued, however, correct?

It did and when I finished the program, Bruce Dean asked me to come back and continue to work with them, finding new plays for the company. I did that for about a year and a half. I started CSC out of my time at the A.R.T. They asked me to direct “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the current students at that time. We moved some people into that production, too, including Jeremy Geidt, who was a founding member of the A.R.T. acting company. Jeremy was our Peter Quince, the director of the play within the play.

That became our very first production. There was massive renovation happening on the Common that year, so we did that show in Copley Square. We’ve done each one since, however, on the Common.

Was free outdoor Shakespeare something always intended for Boston and not Cambridge?

Yes, because it was not an A.R.T. project and didn’t involve Robert Brustein.  As I developed the idea for CSC, I worked closely with my colleague, Joan Moynagh, a very experienced and respected fundraiser who I had known from the A.R.T. Ultimately, Joan helped found CSC.

What was the inspiration for Shakespeare on the Common?

The idea was just to sort of replicate what Joseph Papp had built with the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, and what other companies had long been doing across the country. We figured if Boston called itself the Athens of America, then it, too, should have free Shakespeare, like every other major city.

Three decades in, are you still energized by Shakespeare on the Common?

Absolutely, 100 percent, because this all began as a crazy fantasy idea of bringing accessible, free arts at scale to the city of Boston. Of course, in 1996, it wasn’t at scale. We had 500 or maybe 1,000 people turn up that first night, which was great, but nothing like today when we have 10,000 people show up on a beautiful Saturday night.

From the beginning, however, this all felt so right. As you know, there was so much support in the theatrical, critical, philanthropic, and civic communities. Everybody just embraced this idea and said, “Yeah, we should have this, we should do this,” and we built it from there on, year over year, to where we are today.

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