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It will be spring for another several weeks, but Rogue Community College’s theater arts department is transporting audiences forward a few months with a modern production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The community college’s Performing Arts Center is hosting eight more performances of the department’s first production since 2012, Director Priscilla “Cil” Stengel said. Stengel said about a year ago, RCC President Cathy Kemper-Pelle, who was herself a year into her role as president, approached the department with an idea: to bolster events held at the “Black Box Theater” in Medford. Stengel said because the theater arts department had been somewhat strapped for the resources needed to put on its own production, the performing arts center has been used only to host traveling troupes’ performances. With financial help from the Rogue Foundation and the humanities department, Stengel said, she was ready to decide on a play by the fall. “I wanted to choose a play that I knew and loved,” she said. The first Shakespeare play she had ever performed in herself was an easy choice, she said. About 30 years ago, she had played the part of a fairy in “Midsummer” with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Months of studying and then performing had ingrained its nuances into her mind. “I love it. It’s got everything — it’s got magic, it’s got drama, it’s got humor. It’s got love.” But love has a different look in the RCC rendition of the wacky romantic comedy, first performed in 1605. One of the central couple in the play is, in RCC’s production, same-sex. Hermia, daughter of Egeus in the play, stirs up controversy in the script for rejecting her father’s pick of a husband, the “worthy gentleman” Demetrius. Her father threatens the “ancient privilege of Athens” to condemn his daughter to death or life in a nunnery if she refuses Demetrius and instead chooses Lysander, the object of her affections. The father’s extreme reaction to Hermia’s love for Lysander and a shortage of male actors for the play (a not-uncommon problem in theater) merged perfectly, Stengel said, to change Lysander’s character from male to female. “It told the story in a different way,” Stengel said. “And the script supported it so much.” Lysander and Hermia, played by Jowie Man and Sophie Marilla Stricker, are forced to flee to the woods to preserve their relationship, where the bulk of the play’s chaotic hilarity begins. Themes of romances rejected and being ousted from society lent themselves to cast the central couple both as women, Stengel said. But she sought input from her department head and other peers, she said, as she knew the decision wouldn’t necessarily be well-received. “Anytime you do something with gay characters in it it’s scary because you’re up against people who are not on the same page or up against people who combat that sort of thing,” she said. “Yes, gay marriage is legal and times are changing, but not everybody has changed with those times yet.” Lysander isn’t the only male character to be played by a woman, however. Peter Quince, who leads the troupe of “Mechanicals” in the play, is played by Eva Akiyama, an RCC counselor. The cast is composed of not only students but also community members and alumni. The play runs without an intermission for about 90 minutes in the Black Box, which Stengel said is an “intimate space” that required work with her stage manager Emily Robinson, also of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, to adapt for three-sided visibility. Stengel said her main hope is that audiences have a good time. If possible, she said, she hopes also that viewers experience a similar journey she took through her direction of the production. “As I worked with the play more throughout the rehearsal period, I stopped seeing the fact that we were doing something that was different,” she said. “I stopped seeing that this as a gay story. I began to see the characters and their love and their struggles and their story. That would be a really nice outcome.” ____________________________________________________ Performance information RCC’s Rogue Performance Hall is on the Riverside campus, in Room 109 of Building C at 130 E. Eighth St., Medford. Doors open 30 minutes prior to each show time. Tickets are $13 general admission, $7 for any RCC, SOU or K-12 student with a student ID. Tickets are available online at https://bit.ly/2IM06GK, at the RCC campus bookstore (114 S. Bartlett St., Medford) or at the door. Here are the upcoming performances: Friday, May 25, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 26, 2 p.m.; Saturday, May 26, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, May 27, 2 p.m.; Friday, June 1, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 2, 2 p.m.; Saturday, June 2, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, June 3, 2 p.m. ____________________________________________________ Reach Mail Tribune reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected] or 541-776-4497. Follow her on Twitter @ka_tornay .