Two Plays at the Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Doug Paulson. Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College, Training Company. July 14-16, 2023, 7pm. Macbeth, directed by Caley Chase. Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College, Training Company. July 21-23, 2023, 7pm.

These two plays were put on in July 2023 by the Training Company of Vassar College, outdoors at the Vassar Barns on the grounds of the Preserve at Vassar, a large, 525-acre green space that serves ecological, agricultural, athletic, and cultural purposes for the Vassar and Poughkeepsie communities. My attendance continues my (and probably other theater goers) post-COVID habit of seeing theater outdoors, but what has been continued partly out of fear of plague, makes for a more pleasant but also anxious theater experience, as we all look to the dark clouds to the west and south during the performance, wondering what the outcome will be for us.

Both productions made do with very abbreviated casts (eight actors for Midsummer Night’s Dream, nine for Macbeth), and almost no props or costumes. Midsummer Night’s Dream navigated such challenges more effectively and was overall a more engaging experience, because it moved between the three casts or plots (human lovers, fairies, Bottom and tradesmen putting on Pyramus and Thisbe), in such a way that even when the audience did not know immediately who was who, we knew which group we were watching, and the kinds of jokes we would be witnessing. (In a way, using our natural confusion as actors changed identity, as a way to help us…