
(From left to right) Actors Tommy Walters, Benny Salerno and Ethan Fox with director Catherine Lamm (Photo by Maria Rocha-Buschel)
By Maria Rocha-Buschel
Longtime Stuy Town resident and theater director Catherine Lamm wants to make the Bard accessible for even the most Shakespeare-averse, with a new production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Players Theatre debuting on March 12.
Lamm said that this is the first Shakespeare play she’s done that’s so playful and “loose” and she’d like to direct others to be as accessible to theater-goers who might be Shakespeare-phobic, although she said the format likely wouldn’t work as well with some of the more serious plays.
“This is very playful and very interactive and I don’t think it would work for Julius Caesar, but it would work for the comedies,” she said.
Lamm said that she’s seen probably over 100 productions of the play, including a hip-hop production at Edinburgh’s theater festival that used only a small amount of the original text and a lot of their own interpretation.