Industrial America, house music and Shakespeare: Kim Weild on Midsummer!

In Midsummer!, Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama transports Shakespeare's beloved comedy to industrial America. Director Kim Weild discusses power, transformation, music and why the Bard's work is still evolving.

Transporting A Midsummer Night's Dream to Gilded Age industrial America is a bold reimagining. What was it about that specific moment in American history that felt like the right home for Shakespeare's themes of oppressive authority and constrained autonomy?

For me, the Gilded Age isn't simply a period setting—it's one of the moments in American history when the tensions at the heart of A Midsummer Night's Dream become unmistakably visible. Shakespeare's play asks who has power, who doesn't, who gets to determine another person's future, and what happens when those structures are disrupted.

The rise of industrial America created extraordinary wealth alongside profound inequality. Pittsburgh became one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, shaped by powerful industrialists and working-class communities—immigrants arriving from Europe, migrants from rural Appalachia, and Black Americans building lives and communities despite segregation and unequal access to opportunity. It was a city defined by ambition and innovation, but also by stark divisions of class and power. Questions of autonomy and inherited social expectations feel remarkably close to Shakespeare’s world. That tension—between those who possess authority and those whose lives are shaped by it—feels deeply connected to the play.

Setting the production in western Pennsylvania also allows the play's three worlds to emerge naturally. Theseus and Hippolyta represent industrial power. The Mechanicals become miners, machinists, railroad workers, and mill hands whose creativity exists alongside their labour. The forest becomes the Appalachian landscape—a place where the rigid hierarchies of the industrial world temporarily lose their force. What interests me most is that the forest doesn't erase those hierarchies; it suspends them. For one night, people encounter one another outside the identities they have inherited. Lovers question expectations, labourers become artists, and the powerful lose control. That disruption creates the possibility of transformation.

Ultimately, setting the play during the Gilded Age isn't about illustrating history. It's about revealing the roots of questions we still face today: Who holds power? Who gets to choose their future? And what might become possible when we dare to imagine a more authentic and joyful world?

Andrew Carnegie, a Scotsman who built his empire in Pittsburgh, founded CMU, and now the show is coming to Edinburgh. How consciously is that transatlantic journey woven into what's on stage?

I'm so glad you asked this question. As I thought about why this production, why we needed to do it and bring it to Edinburgh, this was one of the happy discoveries of the project.

The transatlantic journey is woven into the production very consciously, although never in a literal or heavy-handed way. I think stories migrate just as people do. They cross oceans, absorb new influences, and transform. Shakespeare belongs to that ongoing conversation. We're not asking who owns Shakespeare, but rather how every generation and every culture receives him, reshapes him, and, in turn, is reshaped by him.

Andrew Carnegie left Scotland when he was just twelve years old and emigrated with his family to Allegheny City, now part of Pittsburgh. At thirteen, he was working as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill. From there he became a boiler room assistant and then a telegraph messenger. He was largely self-educated through a privately owned library that opened its doors to working boys on Saturdays. As a messenger, he became so fascinated by the theatre that he would arrange his deliveries to the local playhouses so he could stay and watch Shakespeare for free. His life became one of the great stories of transatlantic migration and transformation.

That journey is reflected throughout our production. It's there in the Gilded Age setting, when Carnegie's steel empire was transforming Pittsburgh. It's there in the Appalachian music, which carries deep roots in Scottish and Scots-Irish traditions. And it's there in the language itself. We're performing A Midsummer Night's Dream in an American Modern Verse translation, allowing Shakespeare's poetry to speak through the rhythms and musicality of contemporary American English while preserving the wit, poetry, and emotional complexity of the original. Just as Scottish traditions crossed the Atlantic and evolved into something distinctly American, Shakespeare's language continues to evolve as each generation finds its own voice within it.

So bringing this production to Edinburgh doesn't feel like bringing an American version of Shakespeare. It feels like continuing a conversation that's been taking place across the Atlantic for generations. Shakespeare's play is reimagined through an American historical moment, spoken in contemporary American verse, infused with Appalachian music rooted in Scottish traditions, and performed and designed by young artists from CMU —a university founded by a Scottish immigrant who made that same Atlantic crossing as a twelve-year-old boy.

Nearly two centuries later, those students are bringing Shakespeare back to Edinburgh. It feels as though the story has come home—not because Shakespeare belongs to one place, but because the conversation has come full circle.

The music moves between Appalachian folk and contemporary house - two genres that feel worlds apart on paper. How do those two sounds coexist?

On paper, Appalachian folk and contemporary house music seem like they have nothing in common. But the more we explored them, the more they started talking to each other. Appalachian music carries stories of migration, labour, family, and survival. House music, born from Black and LGBTQ+ communities, creates spaces of joy, belonging, and reinvention. They sound completely different, but at their core they're both communal traditions. They bring people together, and they have the power to transform us.

In our production, those musical worlds belong to different communities. The human world is rooted in Appalachian folk music, while the fairies live in the world of house music. So when the lovers enter the forest, they don't just enter a different place—they enter a different rhythm.

I love house music for the fairies because it creates temporary communities where ordinary rules are suspended, and people are free to become someone new. That's exactly what Shakespeare's forest does. So for me, the score isn't about mixing old and new for the sake of it. It's about showing that transformation—and the joy of discovering a more authentic version of yourself—has always found its voice through music.

Jeff Whitty is best known for Avenue Q, a very different kind of show. What does a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical writer bring to a Shakespeare adaptation that a more classical dramatist might not?

I actually don't think of it as Broadway versus Shakespeare. I think of it as one playwright in conversation with another.

People naturally associate Jeff with Avenue Q, and of course that's an extraordinary achievement. But what Jeff really brings is the perspective of someone who makes theatre for today's audiences every single day. Like Shakespeare, his first loyalty is to the audience. He's always asking: Is the story clear? Is this moment landing? Are we surprising people? Are we moving them?

Jeff is also a terrific actor, and I think that's just as important. He understands language from the inside out—not only as a writer, but as someone who knows what it feels like to speak it, inhabit it, and communicate it to an audience. He has an incredible ear for rhythm, cadence, and the musicality of speech. Shakespeare's verse isn't simply beautiful on the page; it lives in the actor's voice, breath, and body.

And then there's comedy. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays, but comedy is one of the hardest things to get right. Jeff has an extraordinary instinct for comic rhythm, but he never sacrifices emotional truth for a laugh.

What has been most exciting for me is that every day he comes into rehearsal with the mindset of a working playwright, not someone protecting a finished script. Yes, he adapted his translation for the Fringe, cutting it to 90 minutes, but he also keeps listening, rewriting, and responding to what we were discovering together in the room. That spirit of curiosity has made the entire process feel alive.

Shakespeare wasn't writing for posterity. He was writing for the people sitting in front of him. Jeff does the same thing.

Great theatre isn't about choosing between artistry and accessibility. It's about creating unforgettable experiences for a live audience

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most-performed plays in the world. How do you make an audience feel the chaos and joy of the forest scenes when they likely already know exactly what's coming?

I actually think knowing what's coming is one of the great pleasures of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We don't go to Shakespeare because we're waiting to find out who ends up with whom. We go for the same reason we return to a favourite piece of music—we want to experience it again, and to discover something new about ourselves through it.

For me, the forest is really the heart of the play. It's a place where the normal rules stop applying—where people get lost, fall in love with the wrong person, discover parts of themselves they didn't know were there, and somehow come out the other side changed.

So my job isn't to trick the audience or make them forget they know the story. It's to invite them into that experience. I want them to feel a little unmoored themselves, to laugh, to be surprised by a moment they've heard a hundred times, and to rediscover the joy of watching people transform. We have crafted a little surprise for folks in the forest so people will have to come and see for themselves.

The music, the movement, and the fairies all work together to create a world that feels unpredictable and full of possibility.

We know every audience is different, so every performance will be different. If we've done our job well, people may know exactly what's going to happen—but hopefully, they'll feel like they're discovering it for the first time.

The show has been described as carrying queer transformative joy at its heart. How explicitly does the production lean into that, and how does it sit within Shakespeare's original text?

I actually think we're simply following Shakespeare. Shakespeare understood that transformation is one of the great possibilities of being human. More than fifteen of his plays are built around people becoming someone new—through disguise, love, forgiveness, mistaken identity, or simply seeing the world differently.

That's why I don't think queer transformative joy is something we're imposing onto our production. I think we're uncovering something that's already there. For us, it's not about making a political statement. It's about taking him seriously. What feels especially important today is that we're not telling a story where queer identity is defined only by struggle. Theatre also has the responsibility to imagine joy. By the end of the play, everyone leaves the forest transformed—not because they're told who to be, but because they've discovered something more truthful about themselves.

I think that's why A Midsummer Night's Dream has never stopped speaking to audiences. It reminds us that people can change—and that transformation can be a source of joy.

Midsummer! is at the Edinburgh Fringe at Bijou at Assembly Rooms from 6 – 19 Aug (not 12) at 12:30pm. Ticket information here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/midsummer