New Riverdale theater company brings free Shakespeare to the neighborhood

On a rainy summer evening, fairies and mismatched lovers took to the stage at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, bringing Shakespeare’s comic chaos to Riverdale.

The Aug. 27 performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” marked the debut of the Riverdale Shakespeare Players, a new community theatre company created to bring free summer Shakespeare to the neighborhood while giving local adults another opportunity to perform.

The inaugural production grew out of a partnership among the University of Mount Saint Vincent, Christ Church Riverdale and the Riverdale Y, with organizers hoping it becomes an annual Riverdale tradition.

Even the rain that forced the opening performance indoors was folded into the occasion.

“They say that rain at a wedding is good luck,” co-director Sarah Stevenson told the audience before the show. “So I have decided that I’m going to treat this rain in the same way,” she continued, describing it as something that had come to “bless and baptize our new company’s first production.”

The idea began taking shape last summer, co-director Esther Cohen said, after she and Stevenson worked together directing “Bright Star” for the Riverdale Y’s teen summer program. It was there the two discovered they worked well together.

They also noticed something missing from Riverdale’s theatre scene.

“We started talking that there wasn’t really a summer theater for adults in Riverdale,” Cohen said.

Children and teenagers had performing-arts camps, theater companies and summer programs, she said, but adults had fewer opportunities to take the stage during the warmer months.

Cohen began considering what she jokingly described as “Shakespeare in the parking lot,” while Stevenson, an English professor at Mount Saint Vincent, was separately discussing the possibility of developing a summer Shakespeare program on campus.

Eventually, the two realized they were working toward the same goal.

“We both were separately scheming to find a way to do summer Shakespeare in Riverdale,” Stevenson said.

They decided on staging “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” a classic Shakespearian comedy, that tells the tale of four lovers and a group of amateur actors who enter a magical forest, where mischievous fairies use a magic flower to cause chaotic romantic confusion

Cohen and Stevenson, having both been involved in the Riverdale Y’s adult theater program, Riverdale Repertory Company, began recruiting performers through the local theater community, as well as Mount Saint Vincent and posts on social media.

About two-thirds of the cast had some prior connection to Cohen, Stevenson or the Riverdale Repertory Company, Stevenson said. Others found the newly formed group through Facebook. One actor commuted from Brooklyn for the opportunity to perform Shakespeare at the community-theatre level.

The company also found support from three Riverdale institutions. The Riverdale Y contributed rehearsal and performance space and technical equipment, while Mount Saint Vincent and Christ Church Riverdale provided additional performance space and support.

“All three groups wanted to help us launch this summer theater program focused on classical theater, only to bring free performances to the Bronx and offer adults a chance to perform during the summer,” Cohen said.

After opening night at the Mount Saint Vincent, the group performed again at the Riverdale Y and Christ Church Riverdale.

Matt Gordan, who played Nick Bottom, the overconfident amateur actor at the center of some of the play’s biggest laughs, said the comedy allowed the cast to experiment throughout rehearsals.

“It’s called a play for a reason, right?” Gordan said. “We get to play around and try different things and have fun, and it’s a comedy, so we’re always just cracking up.”

Bottom gave Gordan particular freedom to embrace that excess.

“He is kind of a famous caricature of just a really hammy actor,” he said. “I think every actor kind of, in a way, dreams of just turning it up to 11, so to speak.”

Sadie Isseks, who played Hermia, came to the company through Riverdale Repertory, which she became involved with in 2024. She had worked with several members of the new group during an April production of “The Laramie Project” and decided to audition when she learned about their plans.

She had never read “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” until the day before her audition and initially went in reading one of Bottom’s monologues. Cohen and Stevenson instead asked her to try Hermia.

Much of her work from there involved making Shakespeare’s language feel less distant. She broke down the text, making sure she understood what Hermia was saying before finding a way to deliver it as naturally as everyday speech.

“I hope that people left not being afraid of Shakespeare,” she said, whether that meant wanting to read more, perform themselves or return to see the company again.

Michael Kashtelyan, who played Lysander, focused on building a character from the information Shakespeare left on the page.

“The script tells you what Lysander does,” Kashtelyan said. “It is the actor’s job to determine why he does these things.”

Kashtelyan did not know his fellow actors before joining the production, but said he enjoyed working with performers across generations, from older cast members to young children playing fairies.

That mix of community and theater was also what stood out from the other side of the stage.

Audience members Sandra Eirlich and Halle Perlmutter came away from opening night with different relationships to Shakespeare. Eirlich had once performed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” herself, while Perlmutter was seeing the Shakespeare play performed for the first time.

Eirlich said she enjoyed “the spirit of the play, the energy, the make believe, the reality,” but part of the appeal was closer to home.

“It was fun seeing the people in the community take on parts,” Eirlich said.

Isseks hoped that familiarity could make Shakespeare itself feel more approachable, particularly for audience members encountering the playwright for the first time.

For Cohen and Stevenson, the debut was intended less as a one-time production than as a beginning.

“We want to keep doing it,” Cohen said. “We want this to be a regular summer occurrence in Riverdale.”