Project Information
Role – Concept, Direction, Production
Timeline – September – December 2020
Focus – Shakespeare for a new audience| Realtable storytelling | Contemporary integration with classical text
Year
2020
Duration
16 week/4 months
ACT I — The Question
This production marked Cross Bronx Studio’s first full-scale work and our first opportunity to define how we approach classical storytelling.
We began with a simple question:
Shakespeare isn’t anyone’s first language. But music is universal.
So, if music already carries emotion instinctively, could it become the bridge into the text?
That became the foundation of the project.
ACT II — The Choice
We made a decisive interpretive choice.
The songs embedded in A Midsummer Night’s Dream were removed and replaced with contemporary pop music. Tracks by artists such as Lady Gaga, LORDE, and Aerosmith were used as narrative tools, shaping tone, rhythm, and character dynamics rather than functioning as spectacle.
The result was the region’s first Shakespearean musical of its kind. A classical world infused with modern energy, treated with the same spirit as A Knight’s Tale: faithful to the source, but alive to the present.
Rehearsals reflected that approach. The cast brought together experienced performers and some of youth theatre’s most virtuosic emerging talent. The room was built on trust, play, and rigorous exploration, allowing bold ideas to be tested and refined with intention.
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