NEXT Ensemble’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ transforms concert experience
Olivia Chieppa as Puck, left, and Christian Maestas as Fairy, rehearse at Saint Joseph Catholic High School, where portions of the play will be recorded.
NEXT Ensemble presents "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from Aug. 13-15 at The Monarch in Ogden.
NEXT Ensemble is back with another unexpected concert in a nontraditional space. This August, the Ogden nonprofit, known for its series at Alleged club on Historic 25th Street, presents a unique adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that will be a multimedia experience outdoors on The Monarch’s Upper Deck.
The Migrating Mural on the versatile parking lot venue is the “perfect backdrop for this tale of fantastical, meddling fairies,” said Executive Director of NEXT Ensemble Susan Campbell. “Our concerts have been on hiatus since the pandemic, and we wanted to do something outdoors, big and fun to mark our return.”
It’s an adapted production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” complete with live actors, singers, film, fairy lights and a full orchestra. But “rather than presenting a play with music, we are producing a concert with acting,” Campbell said.
A live orchestra of 34 musicians and four singers, conducted by NEXT Ensemble founder Gabriel Gordon, will perform the music by 19th century composer Felix Mendelssohn, a Shakespeare enthusiast who wrote the score to accompany the play about 250 years after this comedy was written, Campbell said.
Mendelssohn wrote the music when it was common for great composers to write incidental music for plays — there were no movie theaters yet — out of which came some famous tunes, including one written for the wedding that takes place towards the end of the play, Gordon said. “It is the ‘Wedding March’ that everyone knows, and now everyone will know where it comes from!”
“This will be an Ogden premiere for the incidental music, and it might even be a Utah premiere for the piece to be performed in this form,” Gordon said.
Actors and singers will accompany the full symphony of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion, relaying “important bits of the story with the audience and one another much in the way that in real life we share memories with one another through self-made video clips (usually made on our phones),” Campbell said. “We work hard to relate how [classical] music is relevant to our lives and communities today.”
Reimagining the concert experience in a relatable way at relaxed and casual venues is what NEXT Ensemble aims to do, often engaging the audience and speaking to them from the stage. Since their start in 2015, Campbell says NEXT presents chamber music concerts featuring local musicians and incorporating music by composers of underrepresented populations — BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, female composers — with a “focus on the story of the composer and composition and how that impacts our lives.”
This summer production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed and adapted by Jennifer Hughes with significant contributions from students at Saint Joseph Catholic High School, is supported by Weber County RAMP, Ogden City Arts and the Utah Division of Arts and Museum.
Performances will be Friday and Saturday, Aug. 13-14, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 15, at 4 p.m. at The Monarch Upper Deck.
Tickets can be purchased at nextensemble.org/calendar.