DREAM at Parks, Farmers Markets and Wineries This Summer
Spencertown, NY, June 1st, 2025…. The Rooted Voyageurs’ will kick off their fourth season of presenting free live theater at beautiful outdoor spaces this summer at outdoor venues in your community. This season’s performance will be A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by The Rooted Voyageurs Artistic Director and Co-founder, Devante Owens.
Venues and dates are:
● Hillsdale Hamlet Park: Friday, June 13th at 7pm
● Marist University Poughkeepsie Campus: Saturday, June 14th at 2pm
● Sand Lake Center for the Arts, Averill Park, NY: Sunday, June 22nd at 2pm
● The Spencertown Park: Friday, June 27th at 7pm
● Les Trois Emme Winery, New Marlborough, MA : Sunday, June 29th and Saturday, July 12th at 3pm
● Little Apple Cidery in Hillsdale, NY: Saturday, July 5th at 3pm
● Millbrook Winery: Sunday, July 6th at 3pm
● Stable Gate Winery in East Schodack, NY : Sunday, July 13th at 2pm
● Copake Hillsdale Farmers Market: Saturday, July 19th at 11am
Enjoy Shakespeare’s classic tale of magic, transformation, and mischief in the Rooted Voyageur’s 2025 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream! While four lovers find themselves caught in a mystery of love and desire, the world of the fairies is thrown into chaos by rivalry and sparking passion. Meanwhile, an ensemble of workers from Athens comes together to rehearse a play to be performed for the Duke’s upcoming wedding day.
With enchanted flowers, fiendish spells, and mistaken identities, the lines between what’sreal and fantastical blur in this joyful rendition of Shakespeare’s famous play.
The Rooted Voyageurs’ family-friendly bare-bones production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is abridged and will run 90 minutes. Bring your own seating and a picnic, or pick up food from the farmers markets or food trucks at select venues and enjoy!
Featuring Abigail St. John as Hermia and Snout, Bernardo Brandt as Theseus and Oberon, Dana M. Harrison as Bottom and Egeus, Francesca Anne Maurino as Cobweb and Starveling, Francesca Hansen- DiBello as Helena and Snug, Joslyn Eaddy Meléndez as Demetrius and Quince, Kate Nourse as Philostrate, Lori Evans as Puck, Tanya Gorlow as Titania and Hippolyta, and Taylor Slonaker as Lysander, Mustardseed and Flute.
The Rooted Voyageurs is a theater company founded in 2022 by Devante Owens (Artistic Director) and Zoe Wohlfeld (Managing Producer). Their mission is to celebrate community through live performance accessible to everyone. Their company members are primarily from Columbia County, NY and Berkshire County, MA. All performances are donation based, you can pay as much as you want or nothing at all.
*Generously sponsored by:
– The Spencertown Academy with generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts
– HRBT Foundation
-Stewart’s Shops
Note on the Production from the Director:
Midsummer is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays for a reason. It has fantastic comedy, young love, and not to mention magic and mischief! Underneath all of this fantastic opportunity for levity is a story about how societal construction and the misuse of power can disrupt not only the world around us, but the cosmos itself. This destruction is made evident in the play through both the mortal world and the fairy kingdom, BUT, so is it’s opportunity for redemption.
Shakespeare shows us all of the destruction ( the banishing and possible death of a daughter because her own father disproves her chosen lover, the altering of the global climate due to the discord between the king and queen of the fairies, the transformation of a working class actor who just wants to put in a play into a donkey for the amusement of a higher power just because he can), but he also provides a path forward if we as the artists and audience look closely enough. That is why I chose this play this year. The path to redemption from chaos is not one of passivity. It is only through the active pursuit of change and the willingness to be better through reflecting on the world around you and how it can be shifted for the common good that we move forward, and away from oblivion.