Ready for 'Midsummer' Magic? :: Sarah Newhouse Talks Being Cast as A Female Puck

Longtime Boston troupe Actors' Shakespeare Project has done "A Midsummer Night's Dream" before -- in 2010, as ASP Co-acting Artistic Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent notes at the ASP website, in a Ben Evett-directed production that referenced urban decay as much as it did deep woods enchantment.

One of the Bard's best beloved works, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is deliciously otherworldly romantic comedy in which mortals and faeries interact over the course of one long, strange night in the forest. Feeling lovers Hermia and Lysander take to their heels in order to avoid Hermia's arranged marriage to Demetrius. The jilted fianc� is in no mood to allow his bride-to-be to slip through his fingers, however, so he follows the couple into the woods -- and so too does Helena, whose unrequited love for Demetrius drives her to brave the wilderness.

The quartet of passionate youths are not alone, however. The forest is inhabited by magical beings -- faeries, in fact, whose king and queen are Oberon and Titania, who happen to be in the midst of a marital spat. Even stranger, though, are the half dozen thespians who have retreated to the woods in order to rehearse a play they intend to perform at a royal wedding. When faeries and mortals collide, the result is a feverish roundelay of unlikely romances, supernatural mischief, and that most Shakespearean of tropes, the play within a play. Let the enchantments begin!

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," easily one of Shakespeare's most delightful and inventive works, has been re-set, re-imagined, and re-jiggered so many times one wonders what's left to do. And yet, the play never loses its appeal, as the long-running American Repertory Theatre's "The Donkey Show," a disco-themed, hard-partying edition of the play, proves every weekend, and has done for more than five years now.

Still, if there's a fresh wrinkle to be explored, ASP is bound to find it. And what do you know: The company has come up with something fresh and so perfect that you have to wonder it hasn't been done before -- or, it if has, that if hasn't been done a lot.

What's the new twist? Simply this: Making Puck, the trickster go-to guy and right-hand man for Oberon, the King of the Faeries, into a go-to gal and right-hand woman. That's right: ASP has made Puck into a female role, or at least cast the role of an androgynous supernatural being with a female actor.

The right woman for the job turns out to be none other than ASP founding member Sarah Newhouse, whose stage credits extend far beyond her work with ASP. Newhouse has appeared on television's "Saturday Night Live," acted in films, and performed in numerous productions in New York and the Berkshires, in addition to her lengthy resume of Boston-area roles: "Shear Madness" at the Charles Playhouse; "Picasso at the Lapine Agile," "Macbeth," and other works at American Repertory Theatre; four productions at the Lyric Stage Company, including "The Miracle Worker"; several roles at the Stoneham Theatre, including "Miracle on 34th Street"; underground Railways' "Distracted" at Central Square Theater; a couple of roles at Boston Playwrights' Theater, including in the production there of "King of the Jews."

Newhouse joins a cast that includes Steven Barkhimer, Paula Plum, Mac Young, Jake Athyal, Elle Borders, Monica Giordano, and Equiano Mosieri.

EDGE had a chance to chat with Newhouse recently and find out all about the different perspective she's bringing to the classic role of Puck, as well as the sensibility that director Patrick Swanson -- who also serves as artistic Director for Boston's acclaimed Revels -- is set to bring to the play.

EDGE: You're a founding company member of ASP. How would you describe the troupe's evolution over the last, what, twelve or thirteen seasons?

Sarah Newhouse: I am extremely pleased and amazed and astonished and astounded... it's kind of incredible to me, and also wonderful, that it has survived this long and continues to thrive, and change, and grow.

EDGE: And especially since you're by design an itinerant group and you don't have a real home base. You've made the greater Boston area as a whole your home base.

Sarah Newhouse: Correct. It's one of the things that we have visited over the years, ideologically, back and forth about whether we want a home and whether we want to continue to be itinerant, because as you can imagine, it's extremely challenging for us to be itinerant. There are some places that we've worked frequently in the past that are not available to us anymore; more recently, it's mostly theaters we've been working in, which is not what we started out doing. We started out not working in theaters at all. It's been challenging to find spaces and find people who are open to having us in their spaces for a month or so at a time. It's a conversation that's ongoing, and we'll see what happens!

EDGE: You've chosen well with the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. I've seen a lot of plays there, and it's a space that has so much to offer a company like the Actors' Shakespeare Project.

Sarah Newhouse: I love that space, personally, and I think this is the fifth show that I've done there -- not just with ASP, but with other companies as well. I just did that Bridge Rep show of 'Mrs. Packard' that was there. They used the space beautifully.

EDGE: I think most of the actors in Boston were in that production.

Sarah Newhouse: It was a huge cast, yeah.

EDGE: I know it's not unusual for ASP to change up genders in its plays, but the idea of a female Puck seems like it should have been done long ago -- there's so much fun to be had in that idea!

Sarah Newhouse: I think it's happened more often in England, maybe, than it has here, but I just saw that Kristine Nielsen is going to be playing Puck at the Delacorte this summer in New York City. I would love to see her do it. I've never seen a female Puck.

EDGE: Whose idea was it to cast Puck as a female character in this production? Was it something you came up with?

Sarah Newhouse: Casting is a very long and kind of arduous process. It can take months because of people's availability. It starts with the season and the plays, and then we all kind of have input on the roles that we'd like to do, or that we're available to do, and then it shakes down with the directors... it's very complicated.

This was not a role that I sought out, or that I even thought of. The puzzle pieces just kind of fell together. Alan called me one day and was like, 'What about Puck?' I was like, 'Well - okay. Sure!' It wasn't something that was on my radar at all.

EDGE: I recall there was an all-female version of 'Macbeth' some years ago that ASP did -- and next season, ASP has announced, there will be an all-female version of 'Julius Caesar.' From your perspective, what's the intention, and the effect, of presenting these plays with an all-female cast?

Sarah Newhouse: Really, you know, it's the female perspective, in a nutshell. Especially in Shakespeare... his plays were originally done with all men, which gave it a completely different spin, and sometimes we forget that. I think that just bringing a completely new perspective from the feminine side is... that's all our intention is. Opening the play up to different possibilities and affecting different populations with what Shakespeare had to say.

EDGE: So, turnabout is fair play.

Sarah Newhouse: Yeah. I mean, we're all human, you know. It's just a matter of perspective. I feel like I've done quite a bit of that with ASP, also, which I love. I wouldn't have the opportunity to play those roles anywhere else, probably... though the world has changed a lot, and a lot of theater companies have done a lot of across-the-board casting these days, which is great.

EDGE: How will your Puck differ, would you say, from the usual Puck that we've seen before?

Sarah Newhouse: I don't want to give away too many surprises, but... I'm a middle aged woman, so I'm not doing any cartwheels or anything; I don't fly -- I'm pretty earthbound, though [the role] is incredibly physical for me. I am mischievous; Puck is basically full of mischief and wants to enjoy him- or herself. And I've got to say that my idea of Puck, and the idea of the director, Paddy Swanson -- he has his own idea of what Puck wants. So we're merging these ideas we have together, But his overarching idea for Puck was [that the character is] kind of androgynous. I'm kind of androgynous. I don't know how it comes across, because I don't get to see it, but my Puck is like all the other Pucks in that he/she is a mischief maker and enjoys wreaking havoc and creating chaos.

EDGE: Puck has always kind of struck me as sort of the typical middle manager -- caught up trying to please his unpredictable, volatile boss. How much more applicable is this reading to the experience of professional women in the workplace?

Sarah Newhouse: I haven't really thought of Puck that way -- 'I have to do what my boss says.' I have found Puck to be much more egocentric than just doing things to please the boss. I'm doing it because it's my gig, but there's always a question of whether the mischief has been on purpose or not. That's kind of up in the air. In terms of relating it to a woman in the workplace... I haven't made that connection at all. I know Puck is subservient in some ways, but he's not Ariel [from 'The Tempest'] -- he hasn't been enslaved. It's his choice to be there. It's his gig, and he likes it. Puck and Oberon have a really kind of interesting relationship -- it's kind of like a marriage. They get each other, they drive each other crazy. Definitely, Oberon is in charge, but Puck kind of does what he wants to do, too, and gets away with it.

EDGE: The press release speaks of the play as a 'rave.' Is ASP looking to attract the 'Donkey Show' set, or signal to Millennials that this is the happening place to be?

Sarah Newhouse: I don't know where that language came from... we're always looking, of course, to bring in new audiences, there always are a lot of kids coming to 'Midsummer' anyway, because I think a lot of adults assume that it's the most accessible Shakespeare for young people. We have a bunch of student matinees... I don't think the idea of the 'rave,' I think that's more of a heady psychological idea than an actual idea of, 'We're connecting to "The Donkey Show."' I don't think Paddy's ever even seen 'The Donkey Show.' I have, but I don't know that he has.

Also, his idea was -- I'm sure you read that his jumping-off point was Peter Brooks, and it was the '70s and everything was kind of wide open. I think the word 'rave' is hearkening back more to that kind of psychedelic hallucinatory time than it is what we think of now, or in the '90s.

EDGE: In his director's notes, Mr. Swanson recalls that Spenser's poem 'The Faerie Queen' had been written as a paean to Queen Elizabeth right around the same time Shakespeare wrote 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

Sarah Newhouse: I think that 'The Faeire Queen' was written just a couple of years before, and Shakespeare was, like, 'Well, I can do better! I'm just gonna break it open and make it wild.'

EDGE: Do you see directorial touches by Mr. Swanson that recall Elizabethan English society and theater -- or more psychedelic touches from the '70s, maybe, as you were just referencing?

Sarah Newhouse: I think he brings in touches from everywhere. I've worked with him a couple of times before, and they're all been very different. The first time we worked together was on 'King Lear,' and that was a dozen years ago in our first season. And then [we worked together on] 'Henry IV,' which was very traditional and by the book. It was a history play.

This, I feel like he's bringing a lot more of his Revels background, with different musical interludes and influences from the magic world, all sorts of touches. But he's very open to collaboration. I have had a really good time working with him. He lets you be, and then slightly shapes what you're doing as you go along.

In terms of Elizabethan touches, of course the language itself always dictates that there is a certain poise in how we present the work, but it's against this open backdrop. So it's a real mix for me, in my mind, this production.

EDGE: So Mr. Swanson is a good director to be Puckish with.

Sarah Newhouse: Yeah! He gave me the structure within the play. He's, like, 'This is my idea.' I fortunately live very close to where his office is, and I met with him before we started rehearsal, and he showed me this Power Point presentation of his visual influences, and showed me what he was thinking. Some of it was kind of punky, which I certainly can relate to, because that's when I grew up -- I was a punk rocker for a little while, too, in the early '80s. I was, 'Okay, I get it. It was a little while ago, but I remember what I was like and what I did.' So, there's a little bit of that -- there's a little bit of everything in there! So he created this framework and then helped me fill it in.

EDGE: What's the rest of the cast like? What's the mood among you all?

Sarah Newhouse: It's wonderful. It's a great group of people. There are only eight of us -- which has been the formula for ASP for the last couple of years, we've done all the shows every season with just eight people. We are all running around like maniacs, because we're all doubling and sometimes tripling, but everyone's great. I've worked, obviously, with Steve Barkhimer before, a number of times; we were trying to figure out how many plays we've been in together over the years. I think it's, like, ten.

Paula [Plum] and I have worked together very little. She has directed me, once; I have never really been on stage with her except maybe when I first moved here and I was doing 'Shear Madness.' I think that's it. We're just having a delightful time with each other. And then the four people who play the lovers are wonderful -- I knew some of them a little bit, and then the other two I didn't know at all, and they're great. We're all getting along well.

EDGE: What are you planning for after 'A Midsummer Night's Dream?'

Sarah Newhouse: I'm resting. I usually don't do show in the summer, because I have a family, and it just kind of works out that way. And I have been in rehearsal and /or production since early January with back-to-back shows, so I'm ready for a break.