Director’s Note

Welcome to the 2025 ISC Santa Fe repertory season! Throughout history, political institutions have identified theatre as a threat to their power. I think the reason is that theatre can activate our minds, cultivate our empathy, and present a plurality of perspectives, identities, and beliefs. This summer, we explore wonder and terror and how these experiences can be two sides of the same coin.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fueled by the wonder and terror of magic. Fairies maintained a powerful hold on the Elizabethan imagination. Traditional folklore did not perceive fairies as tiny and whimsical, but as fierce, human-sized, mischievous, and ambivalent beings capable of both good and evil. Their beauty was terrible to behold. Midsummer examines how human action impacts the environment, and how the societal rigidity of gender roles constrains all people. It shows us how a radical shift in perspective can provoke transformation. It explores confusion and wildness, intoxication and heartbreak, the challenges of the theatrical process in any time or place, and metamorphosis.

Why these plays now? Very simply, they are plays about the dangers of misinformation.

I am so grateful to our ensemble for delving deeply and with such sensitivity into the deep pain, delicate beauty, and wondrous exuberance in these plays. Thank you again, so much, for joining us. You are our final ensemble member, and the plays will change because YOU are here.

With gratitude,

Ariana Karp, Artistic Director