Georgia Shakespeare Company’s Richard Garner returns to Berry to direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Berry College Theatre Company brought in college alumnus and co-founder of the Georgia Shakespeare Company, Richard Garner, to direct Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and with him a level of excitement and professionalism students and faculty alike say they are benefiting from.

The play will premiere Thursday, April 18 at E.H. Young Theatre.

Garner graduated from Berry in 1978, when he learned his trade in what is now Ford Auditorium. He is also the producing artistic director of Georgia Shakespeare, which in its 26th season. He has guided Georgia Shakespeare from a summer season in 1986 to a resident theater producing year-round main stage and educational programming.

“The [Berry theater] department now is much bigger and more organized than when I first came,” said Garner, who lives in Lake Claire, Ga. “I love the three-quarter thrust stage that is at the E.H. Young Theatre now. The whole program is much more efficient and has much more of an impact than when I was here.”

In the late 1970s, the theater program had only two faculty members, he said.

Richard Garner directing Spencer Miller and Allie Southwood during rehearsals for Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Garner is on campus to direct Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which centers on four Athenian lovers who travel into the forest and there are manipulated by fairies. It is Garner’s third time working on the play.

A priority this time is to purposefully, meaningfully reach the audience members by bringing the characters to contemporary life.

“It’s really going to be about the accessibility of the characters of the story,” he said, saying that he hopes the audience can readily grasp the meaning behind the text.

“We focused on the text, what the [play] is saying, and we are making sure [the actors] understand what they are saying,” said Garner, who trained as an actor at the American Conservatory Theater and in theatre administration at Double Image Theatre in New York.

Garner said he hopes that each cast member will use this in-depth knowledge to be free with the emotions and movements that will accompany each line.

Working With Garner

The addition of Garner has heightened excitement in the program and for the production, according to Alice Bristow, an associate professor in theater who also is co-costume designer.

“He is very creative,” she said. “It’s a different concept, a different time period, and a different emphasis.”

Beyond excitement, Garner also has brought the Berry theater students the opportunity to see how a professional works, Bristow said.

Property designer and cast member Allie Southwood, a Berry junior, said Garner’s trained eye, knowledge of the field and hand-on approach are giving production members a taste for what real-world theater directors are like.

“As soon as we came back in January, we were meeting about this show that is going to go on in April,” she said. This is “how professional companies work. They do pre-production, they show each other designs, and they are meeting once a week for an hour and a half.”

Performances of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be at 7:30 p.m. April 18 – 20 and 25- 27 and at 2 p.m. on April 21 and 28 in the E.H. Young Theatre on campus.