A Midwinter Nights Dream

A Midwinter Nights Dream is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous Midsummer Nights Dream originally created by Bonnie Monte and Joe Discher at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. I had the pleasure of coming in to create sound for this show in December 2023 under the direction of the now Artistic Director of the company, Brian Crowe. For Midwinter, Brian and the team drew a lot of inspiration from Nordic and Scandinavian culture which lent itself to a mix of frost and ice-filled sound effects and fairy magic as well as more traditional nordic and Northern European instrumentation including dulcimer, tubular bells, and celtic harp.

An example of this is Puck’s “Up and Down” sequence towards the end of the show where they create a blizzard to bring the four Athenian lovers together. This track was originally written to be sung as a choral but the darker timbre of the composition lent itself more to the dulcimer and tubular bell re-orchestration to underscore this speech and choreography.

Brian B. Crowe
Director
Brian RuggaberSet Designer
Yao ChenCostume Designer
Andrew HungerfordLighting Designer
Drew Sensue-WeinsteinSound Designer/Composer
Robert LongChoral Music Director
Josiane M. LemieuxProduction Stage Manager

Press

“...Drew Sensue-Weinstein’s sound and original music further reinforce the otherworldly theme.”
- Ruth Ross, NJ Arts Maven
“I doubt I’ve ever heard as much laughing at a Shakespeare play as I did at “A Midwinter Night’s Dream,” ... And these weren’t polite little laughs. They were big guffaws, in response to bold, perfectly executed physical comedy. I can’t recommend seeing this production, which will run through the end of the year, strongly enough.”
- Jay Lustig, NJArts.net