2008 Summer Shakespeare
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
along with Pella Shakespeare Company performing
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
June 14 (in Pella) &
June 19-22 & 27-29, 2008 (in DSM)
sponsored by:
Buy both scripts on amazon.com:
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (New Folger Library)
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New Folger Library)
Shakespeare in the Park returns to Des Moines! All performances are free and should it rain, we’ve set up rain locations (location updates will be posted here and through our email list no later than 3 hours prior to performances). Join us for these fantastic classics from the bard.
The cast and crew for Julius Caesar
| Julius Caesar | David James Δ |
| Mark Antony | Kim Grimaldi Δ |
| Marcus Brutus | David Oddy |
| Caius Cassius | Timothy Flynn Δ |
| Octavius Caesar, Cinna | Nick Cornelison |
| Soothsayer, Pindarus | Mark Littlejohn |
| Calphurnia, Titinius | Andréa Markowski |
| Portia, Volumnius | Susan Gulbranson |
| Artemidorus, cobbler | Bob Baskerville |
| Murullus, servant, messenger | Eric Bench Δ |
| Metellus Cimber, Lucilius, carpenter | John Cisar |
| Lucius, Clitus | Matt Jones Δ |
| Decius Brutus, Dardanius | Laura Kearney |
| Flavius, Cinna the poet, Lepidus/Publius | Cecelia Morelli Δ |
| Caska, Strato | Dylan Rolfes |
| Cicero, Popilius, servant | Thatcher Williams |
| Director | John Butz |
| Costume Design | Christy Wilkins |
| Producers | Jami Bassman & Naima Nicholson |
Schedule of performances:
Rain location updates will be posted here and through our email list no later than 3 hours prior to performances.
Saturday, June 14
West Market Park - Pella (map)
Bring your lawn chairs, bug spray, blankets and picnic baskets.
(rain location: Pella Community Center)
- 5 pm - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- 7 pm - Julius Caesar
June 19-22
Sylvan Theatre
Greenwood Park - Des Moines (map)
(South of the Art Center on 45th St, south of Grand)
Bring your lawn chairs, bug spray, blankets and picnic baskets. There is also abundant bench seating for the outdoor amphitheatre.
(rain location: Grand View College Viking Theatre - 2811 E 14th St)
Thursday, June 19 @ 7 pm - Julius Caesar
Friday, June 20 @ 7 pm - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Saturday, June 21 @ 7 pm - Julius Caesar
Sunday, June 22
- 4 pm - Julius Caesar
- 6 pm - A Midsummer’s Night Dream
June 27-29
Union Park - Des Moines (map)
(near sledding hill by E 9th St & Thompson Ave)
Bring your lawn chairs, bug spray, blankets and picnic baskets.
(rain location: Grand View College Viking Theatre - 2811 E 14th St)
Friday, June 27 @ 7 pm - Julius Caesar
Saturday, June 28 @ 7 pm - Julius Caesar
Sunday, June 29 @ 4 pm - Julius Caesar
About the plays:
Julius Caesar: When TFAC opened the poll last fall for our audience to choose this year’s Shakespeare production - we found it a welcome coincidence that during this year’s Presidential Election, the people chose Julius Caesar. While Julius Caesar is one of the most often studied and quoted of Shakespeare’s plays, it is rarely performed. The play follows a group of idealists and revolutionaries, hoping to change the world they live in, and improvising wildly as their plans unravel. Shakespeare’s Rome is as much a dreamscape as it is a political arena, its streets and battlefields full of dreams, ghosts, and echoes of past and future worlds.
In addition, just like in the currently unfolding campaigns, language and rhetoric play a prominent part in this profoundly political play. The play is interesting in that almost everything that happens takes place off-stage and is then retold through rumor or report. This gives Julius Caesar an oddly subjective quality; so little is enacted directly in front of us that we must rely on other people’s characterization of events, and we’re never quite sure whom or what to believe. Words, not deeds, are the primary agents in the play, and they are endowed with extraordinary powers of creation, transformation, and destruction.
When the selection was made for this summer, it was apropos - but as this unbelievable election cycle has continued - Julius Caesar has become even more relevant and pertinent. “Unless our friends, Iowans, countrymen are very thoughtful and careful at the polls this fall,” states TFAC Producing Artistic Director Thatcher Williams. “We could find life almost imitating art and find ourselves in a situation where we could Meet the new boss, same as the old boss just like The Who made famous in their song ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The play involves two sets of couples (Hermia & Lysander and Helena & Demetrius) whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their entrance into the play’s fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) preside and the impish folk character of Puck or Robin Goodfellow plies his trade. Bottom the weaver and his bumptious band of “rude mechanicals” stumble into the main doings when they go into the same enchanted woods to rehearse a play that is very loosely (and comically) based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, their hilarious home-spun piece taking up Act V of Shakespeare’s comedy.
