In August 2022, Tiltyard took

MIDSUMMER

to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe


The last fairy lurks in a dying forest.
A ragtag crew of office drones tries to put on a play...


MIDSUMMER weaves together text from every one of Shakespeare's plays to create a new story: a deep, dark, adventurous comedy, filled with magical possession, crazed love triangles, and midnight mayhem. A radical Shakespearean remix for an era of ecological crisis, MIDSUMMER is an opportunity to reawaken our faith, and to ask ourselves the moment’s all-important question: In a heartsick, broken, wintery world, how do we imagine a future?

MIDSUMMER is a Shakespearean mash-up like you’ve never seen before.

Using text not only from A Midsummer Night’s Dream but also from every one of Shakespeare’s 36+ plays, we’ve rebuilt the stories and themes of Shakespeare’s original green-world comedy to speak to a present under the shadow of human despair and environmental collapse. What we’ve made is a playful, thoughtful, high-stakes fable about all the ways we’ve broken the world and how we might go forward in the wreckage, together and more caring than before.

The players

  • Brennan Caldwell (Performer)

    After a decade in the professional theater, Brennan stepped away during the pandemic to become a software engineer, a transition that while fulfilling left him with a sense that he was abandoning an essential part of himself, but then the psychic at the office holiday party told him he had to let go of the either/or, so here we are.

  • Hannah Jane Ginsberg (Performer)

    Hannah Jane Ginsberg is an actor, singer, and comedian. You can generally find her performing at various cabaret venues in the greater NYC area and co-hosting Pod Ledom, an America's Next Top Model recap podcast. All my love to SRP and OVG.

  • Annelise Lawson (Performer)

    Annelise Lawson is a bi-coastal actress, theater maker, and teacher. Recent credits include Masha in Three Sisters (Two River Theater), Anna in Babes in the Wood (Signature Theater, world premier), Masha in Dmitry Krymov’s √3 Sisters (International Festival of Arts & Ideas). She holds an MFA in Acting from The Yale School of Drama & certificates in acting from the Moscow Art Theatre School, the British American Drama Academy, and iO. anneliselawson.com

  • Kelly Letourneau (Performer)

    Kelly Letourneau is a human being who loves to play make believe with an ensemble. She loves nachos, ferry rides, Ted Lasso, and being an auntie. During the pandemic times, she ate a lot of cheese, and she developed her first play, Sad Case of Irish Girl, which is based on the real story of her great great aunt who died on the Lusitania during its fateful final crossing. Some acting credits that make her heart happy include: A Valentine for Sondheim (Fiasco Theater), MIDSUMMER (Tiltyard), Pride and Prejudice by Kate Hamill (Playhouse on Park), and The Apple Boys (HERE Arts Center). When not onstage, Kelly is a proud tentacle of Octopus Theatricals, where she works as Producing Associate. Kelly has trained with Fiasco Theater, Shakespeare Academy @ Stratford, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and she holds a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Art. kellyletourneau.com @kelletourneau

  • Nick Ong (Performer)

    Nick Ong is an NYC-based actor, originally from the Bay Area. He is beyond grateful to be returning to the magical world of MIDSUMMER. He is also a hat wearer. A ramen enthusiast. An innocent Spurs fan. An obsessive Twitter spectator. A new cat dad. A believer in the top button. A theater aisle sitter. A plane window sitter. An above average golfer. A stubborn Vans customer. An amateur lyricist. A Jungkook bias. And a recovering nail biter. Some also important select theatre credits include: Three Sisters (Two River Theater), Another Revolution (EST), Wendell & Pan (Skeleton Rep). nickong.com

  • Niall Powderly (Performer)

    Niall Powderly is an actor and theatre maker. His credits among others include Three Sisters (Two River Theater), Suitcase Under the Bed (Mint), Dmitry Krymov's √Three Sisters (International Festival of Arts and Ideas), MIDSUMMER (Tiltyard), Big St. Germain (CG at the Signature Theatre), Phaedra's Love and The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (YSC), Indecent (Yale Rep). Film/TV: Quantico, New Amsterdam. BFA: NYU, MFA: Yale. Thanks to family and friends.

  • Aaron Profumo (Performer)

    Aaron Profumo is a Dad who makes theater his children are not old enough to see and they are confused about what he does as a profession. Aaron is a producer, company manager, acting coach, and unlicensed therapist with A Nice Cozy Coffee Shop. Productions include: 50/50 Old School Animation (The Public, JACK, Munich Volkstheater), while you were partying (Soho Rep), and Protec/Attac (Hamburg Schauspielhaus). He is also a poker player, day trader, and has been featured in the New Yorker podcast series about r/wallstreetbets and Gamestop. Aaron is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and hasn’t acted since he last did this play in 2016 lol.

  • Josephine Stewart (Performer, Company Co-Founder, Producing Team)

    Josephine Stewart is a multidisciplinary performer and editor originally from Cleveland, Ohio. She is interested in performance and folk processes as integral parts of human function, and in all the ways bodies tell stories. She left her formal studies of theater at Oberlin College and the La MaMa Experimental Theater Program disreputably sans degree, and Sara Holdren is to blame for her return to the art. Favorite projects include The Most Wonderful Love, Eurydice, He Who Gets Slapped, Orlando, and the original MIDSUMMER. She has taught and performed at the Augusta Heritage Center and is an award-winning old-time percussive dancer. She lives in Baltimore and loves eggs.

  • Sara Holdren (Director, Co-Adaptor, Company Co-Founder, Producing Team)

    Sara Holdren is a director, teacher, and writer-about-theatre. She lives in Richmond, VA, with her partner Beau (a writer), their queenly cat companion Masha, several bicycles, very many books, and a sourdough starter named Serafina Pekkala. She gives thanks to Forster, Miyazaki, Mnouchkine, Herzog, Bulgakov, Chekhov, and of course, good old Billy S. saraholdren.com

  • Helen Jaksch (Co-Stage Manager/Crew/Swing/Hero)

    Helen Jaksch (she/they) is a dramaturg, director, performer, arts educator, and writer from El Paso, Tejas. Helen believes in the vision of young people and the importance of new plays that are both necessary and extraordinary. At Loyola University of New Orleans, Helen recently directed a student-devised piece called Everyone & Everything and served as Creative Director for Theatre for One: For This Moment. They also currently teach in the Theatre & Dance Department there. As a dramaturg, Helen has worked on countless new plays and devised projects with artists as young as four and as old as eighty-four. Select directing credits include Native Gardens, Everybody (Southern Rep Theatre), The Mystery Boy (Yale Cabaret), and A Voice in the Distance (NYU). You can hear Helen’s voice-acting work on The Snake’s Paw. Helen also works with Prescription Joy, New Orleans’ first healthcare clowning non-profit. They hold an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and an MFA and DFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama.

  • James Lanius (Co-Stage Manager/Technical Director)

    A St. Francisville native, James returned to southern Louisiana after working in NYC and receiving his MFA in Technical Design and Production from the Yale School of Drama. While at Yale, James was the Production Supervisor for the Yale Cabaret as well as an Assistant Production Manager at the Yale Repertory Theatre and YSD. He spent his summers in southern Vermont as the Assistant Production Manager at Weston Playhouse and later as the Production Manager at the Dorset Theatre Festival. In St. Francisville and New Orleans James was a founding member of the St. Francisville Transitory Theatre where he designed & produced La Concierge Solitaire, bobrauschenbergamerica, and many others. For the past six years James has worked as the Production Manager at Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans, and during the pandemic, he developed the YouTube channel “Free Tours by Foot New Orleans”, producing videos for tourists & locals.

  • Beau Gambold (Producing Team / Media Manager)

    Beau Lee Gambold is a writer, mostly of fiction, most of which is about trying to be a good person in a complex world. He did the MFA thing at Columbia, and his writing has appeared in literary journals across the US. Beau has also served in the Peace Corps, worked in politics, waited tables, bicycled across America, maintained wilderness trails, been nationally ranked in karate, and worked the front desk at an abortion clinic. Born in Texas, raised mostly in Mississippi, he currently resides in Richmond, VA, alongside the epic Sara Holden and the bear/feline/queen/Miyazaki demon Masha.

  • Rachel Carpman (Co-Adaptor, Company Co-Founder, Producing Team)

    Rachel Carpman spent many years as a dramaturg, and is now pursuing a career in first amendment and media law. The work is startlingly similar. Favorite achievements include defending a scientist's right to write whatever she chooses, being a founding member of Tiltyard, and once making a wedding cake in two kitchens, three refrigerators, and one harrowing car ride across Louisiana.

MIDSUMMER

Originally adapted Sara Holdren and Rachel Carpman from the play(s) by William Shakespeare

Revised by Sara Holdren & the Company for 2022 Performance

Cast in order of appearance:

Puck — Josephine Stewart
Quince / Oberon — Niall Powderly
Snout / Demetrius — Brennan Caldwell
Starveling / Hermia — Kelly Letourneau
Snug / Helena — Annelise Lawson
Flute / Lysander — Nick Ong
Bottom — Aaron Profumo
Al / Titania — Hannah Jane Ginsberg

Team:

Director — Sara Holdren
Original Co-adaptors – Sara Holdren & Rachel Carpman
Co-Stage Manager / TD — James Lanius
Co-Stage Manager/ Crew / Swing/Hero — Helen Jaksch
Lighting Design Consultant — Andrew Griffin
Sound Design — Fred Kennedy, Liam Bellman-Sharpe
Costume Design — Tricia Emlet and Sara Holdren, with assistance from Fabian Aguilar & Josephine Stewart
Producing Team — Rachel Carpman, Beau Gambold, Sara Holdren, Helen Jaksch, James Lanius, Aaron Profumo

  • Photo by Andrea Berman

    We celebrate the original 2015 company of MIDSUMMER...

    Scenic Design by Claire Deliso and Christopher Thompson
    Costume Design by Fabian Aguilar
    Lighting Design by Andrew F. Griffin
    Sound Design by Sinan Refik Zafar
    Projection Design by Rasean Davonte Johnson
    Stage Management by Victoria Whooper and Emely Zepeda
    ENSEMBLE / Melanie Field, Leland Fowler, Niall Powderly, Christopher Ross-Ewart, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Josephine Stewart, Andrej Visky, Shaunette Renée Wilson
    Photos by Andrea Berman

  • Photo by Dianna Bush

    And the 2016 New York company...

    Scenic Design by Christopher Thompson
    Costume Design by Fabian Aguilar
    Lighting Design by Andrew F. Griffin
    Sound Design by Sinan Refik Zafar
    Projection Design by Rasean Davonte Johnson
    Stage Management by Leigh Walter
    Assistant Stage Management by Devin Fletcher
    Assistant Director: Chelsea Drumel
    ENSEMBLE / Brennan Caldwell, Hannah Jane Ginsberg, Annelise Lawson, Kelly Letourneau, Nick Ong, Niall Powderly, Aaron Profumo, Josephine Stewart
    Photos by Dianna Bush

And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original

Do you amend it then; it lies in you