![]() ![]() But at its center is Jacob Ming-Trent’s wonderfully playful and textured performance as the weaver and would-be actor Bottom caught in a fairy’s spell as he and his friends rehearse their play. There’re still the wayward lovers and the fairy Queen Titania with her husband Oberon and the mischievous Puck and all unfolds in the glorious great hall of the National Building Museum which is transformed into a forest of dreams. This current version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has a similar recalibration to Merry Wives : it very much highlights Bottom and the play within the play that workers are producing to honor the Duke’s wedding. He is very familiar to lovers of Shakespeare with frequent performances at the Public Theater, both at the Astor Place theater and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park where he played “Falstaff” to rave reviews in their rollicking 2021 production of “Merry Wives” set in the African immigrant community of Washington Heights and which reopened the theater after the pandemic shut-down. Jacob has worked with many outstanding playwrights including Suzan Lori Parks in her Pulitzer-Prize winning- play “Father Comes Home from the Wars” for which he picked up a Lucille Lortel Award. After completing the program, he was the youngest person ever accepted into the American Conservatory Theaters M.F.A Program. During his first year, he was accepted into the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab. While he’ll look familiar to anyone who’s seen Only Murders in the Building, Watchmen, or White Famous, Jacob Ming-Trent is primarily known and deeply admired for his work in theater: Here’s some background: Born in Pittsburgh, he moved to NYC at seventeen to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory. Jo Reed: That is actor Jacob Ming-Trent, he is playing Bottom in the Folger Theater production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National Building Museum. And so I think we're doing, again, in the tradition of Shakespeare we're doing that here. That's why when his actors would go to their different communities outside of London, they would change the plays when they took them home, right, to fit that community. And I think that's what his real intent was. Jacob Ming-Trent: But I actually think Shakespeare is expecting us to bounce off his work, to use it as a stepping stone. Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. ![]()
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