Why This Play?: 

Half my life ago, I was a teenager on her first trip to Europe.  My English teachers took a group of students on a two-week literary tour of Ireland and the UK.  In many ways (e.g. my pop culture preferences), I’ve been trying for 17 years to chase the magic of that trip.  On the southern border of Scotland, I purchased a huge, pale pink, perfect cashmere sweater.  Ever since, it’s served as my personal security blanket, and is one of my prized (if battered) possessions.  It’s warm, filled with great memories, and always there when I need it.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is my literary equivalent of that sweater.  It’s the first Shakespeare I ever read, back in my dreamy, very bookish twelve-year-old days (eh, what's changed?).  The play that always makes me still kinda-sorta believe in fairies.  It’s the last play in which I performed…although hopefully that is not forever the case.  This is the play I read in the winter when I’m dreaming of warm days and long hikes in the woods.  It’s not necessarily my favorite in all of Shakespeare, but reading or seeing it is always like greeting an old friend.