Seattle Shakespeare Company Presents A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, 10/20-11/13

Seattle Shakespeare Company opens its new season at the Intiman Playhouse with the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Director Sheila Daniels, who staged the company's award-winning production of Electra, returns to play with the dark shadows and golden glow of Shakespeare most popular play.

Tickets to A Midsummer Night's Dream are available now through the Seattle Shakespeare Company Box Office at 206-733-8222 as well as online at www.seattleshakespeare.org.

"Due to the wonders of Microsoft word count, I can tell you the word 'love' is used 140 times in this play," staTed Daniels at the first rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream. "This play should really be called 'A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Love Story.' It is about love in all of its forms - good, bad, ugly, beautiful...bestial." Wanting the play should be a celebration of love in all its forms, Daniels has recast the gender of one role to reflect a same-sex relationship. Lysander, traditionally a male character, will be played by a woman and renamed Lysandra.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, two pairs of young lovers escape their families and the tyranny of the court to enter the unpredictable world of the forest ruled by the king and queen of the fairies. By twists and turns, the forest's mystical inhabitants wreak havoc with the four as well as with an unsuspecting theatrical troupe, turning everyone's world upside down.

Actors Reginald Andre Jackson and Amy Thone play Oberon and Titania, the battling fairy royalty. Jackson and Thone played opposite one another as the lovers Helena and Demetrius in Seattle Shakespeare Company's first production A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1998. Also featured in the cast are: Chris Ensweiler (Puck), Todd Jefferson Moore (Nick Bottom), Christine Marie Brown (Lysandra), Trick Dannecker (Demetrius), Allison Strickland (Hermia) and Terri Weagant (Helena).