Things to get dreamy this summer in the St. Norbert ruins Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iago Speaks in SIR’s upcoming season By: Ben Waldman Posted: 10:45 AM CST Friday, Feb. 23, 2024 Last Modified: 11:45 AM CST Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024 Updates

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Theatre lovers will be filled with joy and mirth upon hearing that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is headlining Shakespeare in the Ruins’ upcoming season in the luscious setting of St. Norbert’s Trappist Monastery Park.

The beloved romantic fantasy was last produced by the theatre company in 1995, so artistic director Rodrigo Beilfuss says it was about time to return to the forest of Arden, into the spritely realm of Oberon and Titania.

“I think it’s time for us to return to this really smart, poetic, wacky story about magic and our need as humans to surrender to it in order to keep carrying on,” says Beilfuss, who became artistic director in 2019.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream is uniquely positioned in Shakespearean canon because it is, as far as we know, one of his only original pieces of work. It stands alone as a work of his marvellous imagination,” adds Beilfuss, who will also direct the production, running from June 6 to July 6, with Brenda MacLean designing the costumes and Kate George devising the set and props.

For the third consecutive season, SiR will pair a classic Shakespearean title with a modern, Bard-adjacent production, with both shows running in repertory. It’s a formula that has thus far yielded successful world premières of Ron Pederson’s The Player King and Jessica B. Hill’s The Dark Lady, last season’s critically acclaimed co-production with Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan.

This year, the company’s 31st, SiR will revisit the profane wretch of Othello in a new work by Saskatchewan playwright Daniel Macdonald entitled Iago Speaks, set to run from June 14 to July 7.

Last year, Macdonald’s continuation of the devilish Iago’s story ran at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, directed by Winnipeg’s Krista Jackson. Beilfuss saw the performance, which he calls “a really witty play that asks us, ‘What is theatre?’”

“Iago famously says, ‘From this time forth I never will speak word,’ before being ushered off stage by a jailor as he is bleeding but not dead,” says Beilfuss.

“Daniel imagined what happened next: we find the jailor and the silent Iago in his jail cell, materialized in front of an audience.”

Casting for both productions is underway, but the two-man team for Iago Speaks is already set. Saskatchewan actor Josh Beaudry — the original jailor — will reprise his role, while Winnipeg’s Arne MacPherson will embody Iago, a role he played at the Ruins during 2009’s production of Othello.

Those two actors will also appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with MacPherson set to play fairy king Oberon and struggling actor Peter Quince, and Beaudry playing the donkey-headed Bottom. Sharon Bajer is attached to play Titania.

Tickets for both productions go on sale April 23, which would be Shakespeare’s 460th birthday and, coincidentally, the 408th anniversary of his death. Any tickets bought before May 15 will be discounted 15 per cent.

A pivotal year ahead

Both productions will share the same creative team of Beilfuss, MacLean and George, a choice Beilfuss says was made both out of financial necessity and collaborative urgency, forcing the company to make considered design choices and put everything they can into the performances.

“On one side, it’s inspired by financial pressures, as most companies, including ours, struggle with deficits. A lot of funding has been either frozen or cut, especially in classical theatre. I don’t cost the company anything, and so the financial pressures have inspired us to apply artistic creativity,” he says.

In a November newsletter on his Bard Blog, Beilfuss mused that 2024 will be a “pivotal year” for performing arts in Canada, with companies “bracing for a bumpy ride.”

“Our company is doing all right, but we’re certainly concerned with the sustainability of our sector right now,” Beilfuss tells the Free Press. “We’re concerned with changes in terms of a new provincial government, which we still haven’t heard what their solid commitment to the arts is. We’re concerned with the Winnipeg civic arts budget. We’re concerned with corporate funding, which has really diminished for things related to Shakespeare in the past two to three years.”

While the company is not the only to experience those concerns, Beilfuss says SiR is doing its best to remain vigilant and continue to produce works that draw theatregoers to the unconventional St. Norbert venue.

“People love coming to the ruins, being outdoors in that gorgeous setting. We know we serve a need and a desire from audiences to be here right now,” he says.

While advance sales haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels, individual donations to the organization – a registered charity — have increased in recent years, Beilfuss noted.

“(Theatre) has an existential crisis happening atop a precarious financial situation of high costs and lack of funding, but we are very hopeful because people love what we do,” he says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com