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| Shana Cooper |
Shana Cooper makes her PlayMakers’ directorial debut with
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She brings a wealth of Shakespeare directorial experience with credits including Romeo and Juliet at Yale Repertory Theatre, Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Taming of the Shrew at California Shakespeare Theater, and Richard III at the Yale School of Drama.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shana’s favorites, being the first play she ever directed. She recently created an “audacious” production of Midsummer for Berkeley’s California Shakespeare Theater. Shana says she’s especially drawn to Midsummer because of Shakespeare’s exploration of the metaphysical in the play; how he portrays the human world as the surface of an unseen world that affects and sometimes overrules human actions. She feels the unseen world, the world of the fairies and the dream, seems like the unconscious. Shana explains that one of the challenges of staging Midsummer is establishing differentiation between dream and reality. She says she loves that imagination itself is the very foundation of the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Come see Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at PlayMakers November 1 – December 7. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.