A Midsummer Night's Dream, Weird Sisters Theatre Collective at Center Stage on Real, August 18 - 27

by Michael Meigs

Once a year, a theatre production of the Weird Sisters Collective briefly appears like a friendly comet in the Austin evenings. Like comets, they're "wanderers," at least in recent years -- you need to be alert for news of them each July or August, because the venues for their productions have changed from year to year.

They had planned to do the Jacobean drama The Roaring Girl by Dekker and Middleton, under the guidance of their friend Dr. Lizz Ketterer, but Ketterer's unexpected death in February left them adrift. They turned to comfort theatre -- Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of those reliable pieces that, as Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle once commented, comes around on Austin stages with the regularity of clockwork.

Faires' observation was accurate. A Midsummer Night's Dream is familiar and beloved for its airy fantasy and good-hearted mockery of the predicaments of love. We all enjoy white magic, whether it involves transformation of brash tradesman Bottom into an ass or transformation of love-besotted young persons into fools. Plus, it's the shortest of Shakespeare's plays.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet, Weird Sisters Theatre Collective at the Cathedral of Junk, July 23 - August 1

The Weird Sisters Theatre Collective's Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet was a very Austin event. The Sisters performed Anne-Marie MacDonald's broad feminist satire of Shakespeare and stuffy scholars in the backyard at the one and only Cathedral of Junk in South Austin, just a few blocks south of 290W/Ben White Boulevard.

Closing night last Saturday was full, as a wide mix of folks filled up the very miscellaneous and inventive collection of chairs. Proprietor Vince Hannemann was rustling up seats right up till the opening, and he received a special ovation from the Sisters and the audience afterward, for his broad-spirited hosting.

This was theatre, but it was also a party and a celebration.

The fun-loving feminist group was doing its fifth summer production. Their lengthy 2004 manifesto remains very in effect. It begins, "WEIRD: We mean WEIRD in its original sense: wayward . We challenge the status quo, for we know that most theater drifts and defaults to old, hegemonic ways of interpreting, casting, directing, and producing."

This is a loopy "what-if?" story about a woman academic, much neglected, misled and patronized by her thoughtlessly arrogant male supervisor.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .