A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Opens At Impact Theater 2/13

Impact Theatre continues its Bar Mitzvah 13th season with its production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Impact Artistic Director Melissa Hillman. Midsummer opens February 13. 2009 and plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until March 21, 2009 (with a preview February 12) at Impact's home, La Val's Subterranean in Berkeley.

The scene is a 1980s nightclub. Hermia loves Lysander. Lysander loves Hermia. Helena loves Demetrius. Demetrius loves (wait for it) Hermia. WTH? The four lovers run away to the forest, where Puck complicates matters by making the two men fall in love with Helena instead. Bottom, the club's hot chick bartender, leads a ragtag bunch of the club's staff as they attempt to put on a play to entertain club owner Theseus at his wedding to Hippolyta. Overseeing it all are Oberon and Titania, the feuding king and queen of the fairies. Titania must be a top, because she develops a thing for Bottom, who's got quite an ass-for a head.

Now, for the first time, Impact takes on a Shakespearean comedy. With the company's proven track record with comedies such as Ching Chong Chinaman, Money & Run, and the Impact Briefs series, A Midsummer Night's Dream promises to be a perfect storm on the stage of La Val's Subterranean.
Tickets for A Midsummer Night's Dream start at $12, and there are two pay-what-you-wish performances. Tickets are available online at impacttheatre.com.

For more information, please call 510-464-4468 or visit impacttheatre.com. 

Since 1996 Impact Theatre has spoken to a new generation of theatregoers and enthusiasts alike who want to see something fresh and bold on stage. Impact's audience ranges from students to professionals to seniors, all of whom share a taste for exciting, unpretentious theatre that doesn't conform to stale assumptions of what constitutes high culture.
Impact's primary mission is to directly contribute to the future of American theatre through focusing on new plays by emerging playwrights. Impact has produced 17 full-length world premieres, including 12 by local playwrights, as well as dozens of world-premiere ten-minute plays by burgeoning writers nationwide in the Impact Briefs series. Impact also prides itself on its fast-paced, vital, contemporary spins on classic drama.

Impact shows compel, provoke, and inspire, at prices everyone can afford. And nowhere else in the Bay Area can you eat pizza and drink beer while you're watching a play. The East Bay Express named Impact "Best Small Theatre Company of 2008" and included Impact's Ching Chong Chinaman and Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam in its list "Top Ten Plays of 2008."