A Midsummer Night's Dream
The 30th Annual Newton North/South Shakespeare Production
directed by Ross MacDonald
NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Saturday, May 11 performance will be held at 2 PM rather than 7:30 PM. Please contact jeff_knoedler@newton.k12.ma.us if there’s an concern.
OBERON: Simon Wolfe
TITANIA: Sophie Scharlin-Pettee
THESEUS: Gordy Vladimirov
HIPPOLYTA: Liza Sockwell
EGEUS: Hannah Nahar
HERMIA: Rebecca Williams
HELENA: Mackenzie Dress
LYSANDER: Peter Diamond
DEMETRIUS: Hiroki Shibuya
PUCK: Sophie Cash
PHIL-O-STRATE: Nadav Furgang, Peter Belsley, Cameron Walsh
The Players:
NICOLA BOTTOM: Hayley Goldstein
PATRICIA QUINCE: Nika Varphovsky
FRANCINE FLUTE: Emily Clott
ROBINE STARVELING: Ellen Batutis
SARA SNUG: Liza Bialik
TINA SNOUT: Alison Forman-Katz
Theseus Noblemen:
Terry Altherr
Ilias Varnvakas
Henry McEwen
Danny Ruttenberg
Titania’s Faeries:
THE FAIRY: Jane Maunsell
PEASBLOSSOM: Emily Ho
COBWEB: Nellie Rogers
MOTH: Francis Bernstein
MUSTARDSEED: Susannah Thal-Nir
Oberon’s Faeries/Hippolyta’s Ladies in Waiting:
Naomi Forman-Katz
Tara Parker-Cabache
Lauren Forrow
Ross MacDonald is absolutely delighted to be working for the Newton South and Newton North High Schools on their 30th annual Shakespeare co-production. He was recently seen in Actors Shakespeare Project’s (Macbeth) in the role of Ross (directed by Paula Plum), and has also worked with ASP playing Hector in (Troilus and Cressida - directed by Tina Packer). Other Boston credits include, Fred in Hanover Theatre, Worcester (A Christmas Carol). Arthur Dimmesdale (The Scarlett Letter- New Rep on Tour), Brendan and The Playwright (Lieutenant of Inishmore and Exits and Entrances- New Rep Main Stage), Guildenstern (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead-Summer Festival Theatre), Simon Bliss (Hayfever-Publick Theatre Boston). In the UK, roles included, Faustus (Doctor Faustus), Spurio (Revengers Tragedy), Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet), Aston (The Caretaker) and in two seasons with The Oxford Shakespeare Company, roles included Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing) and MacBeth (Macbeth).
As a director he has worked with The New Rep on Tour program, ‘Macbeth’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. Summer Festival Theatre ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Twelth Night’, and The Chevalier Theatre in Medford, ‘A Christmas Carol’. He has adapted for the stage, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’ and is currently working on a stage adaptation of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. In all, Ross’ work as an actor, director and theatre producer number some 40 plays and 5 films in some ten years of work.
He has worked in a number of schools in the UK, Zimbabwe and the New England Area. More specifically in the Boston Area, he has worked in the positions of theatre director, visiting lecturer and performer as well as a rugby and soccer coach. He has been fortunate to work at such schools as, Roxbury Latin, BC High, Brighton High School, Boston Latin, Catholic Memorial, and Boston University.
Ross is a UK Army veteran, having served in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2007, as well as that he is a graduate of the University of Southampton (UK) and The London Academy of Performing Arts (UK).
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South Stage and Theatre Ink are proud to claim one of the longest running Shakespeare performance programs for high school students in the United States. South Stage and North's Theatre Ink have been collaborating to produce Shakespeare for 29 years. Few high school theatre programs prioritize Shakespeare every year; fewer still collaborate with a sister school, mixing casts and crews. Newton has been doing both for three decades, as of this year, the 30th annual production.
South Stage initiated the collaboration with Shakespeare & Company and Newton North in the 1982-83 school year. Performing in both schools, working with a combined cast from North and South, Kevin Coleman, Education Director of Shakespeare & Company, launched Romeo and Juliet, the first in an unbroken line of Shakespeare collaborations which have challenged students, delighted audiences, generated friendships, brought North and South together in a common enterprise, and fostered interest in theatre across town. As a result, hundreds of Newton students have rehearsed and performed Shakespeare, worked with professional directors, made friends in both Newton high schools, discovered the power that lies in their voice, and explored the depth, power, and muscularity of Shakespeare's text. Literally thousands have witnessed this remarkable process from the audience.
As dozens of professional directors have shown us since 1983, "Shakespeare is the Olympics for actors." Shakespeare's text demands a combined physical, emotional, intellectual, and vocal commitment beyond that of modern plays or musicals. It is Shakespeare & Company's specific belief that combining disciplined, sustained voice work with Shakespeare does more than bring Shakespeare alive for students; it aims at bringing students alive to the human possibilities within themselves as they confront Shakespeare's text. As Kevin Coleman writes, "Adolescence is most like the Renaissance. We seldom repeat its intensity and extremity, its excitement and its pain. What better material, what better "script" to put into the hands of adolescents than Shakespeare? The accuracy with which he reveals our thoughts and feelings, our human nature, teaches who and what we are, and consequently what we may become. In the truest sense of the word, he educates."
