From the archives…

A Queer Midsummer Night’s Dream

Mauckingbird Theatre Company presents a gender-bent look at Shakespeare’s famous play for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated —from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, widely seen as a homoerotic paean to a young male muse, “the master mistress of [his] passion” It was the language and drama of Shakespeare and other classic playwrights that first attracted Peter Reynolds to the theater, but as a gay man he was dismayed by the state of modern gay theater. “I’ve seen a lot of new gay work that I haven’t particularly liked,” he says. “Many of them are what we call ‘underwear plays’ — vehicles to get gay men or women in underwear. more…