1 Titania – From the Script
Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,—
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2:1
2 Titania – At the Festival
Though most parents are loath to admit to having a favorite child, Utah Shakespeare Festival co-founder Fred Adams was not shy about admitting that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was his favorite play. It perhaps demonstrates Mr. Adam’s great patience and restraint that he waited until the Festival’s third season to mount its first production of Midsummer, which he directed. Through 2005 it was produced seven more times, with various guest directors. Though he retired from his position as the Festival’s Executive Producer six years earlier, Mr. Adams returned to direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream one last time in 2011. This romantic comedy remains one of the Festival’s most produced and most popular of Shakespeare’s plays.
3 Titania – Artist: Stanley J. Watts
After studying fine arts at Utah State University, Stanley J. Watts continued his training with Salt Lake City sculptor, Dr. Avard Fairbanks. Now a noted sculptor in his own right, Watts is best known for his bronze sculptures celebrating famous figures in American history including one of George Washington located near the revolutionary encampment at Valley Forge and one of Abraham Lincoln near the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This sculpture of Titania, was created based on an original concept outlined by A. Clayton Robbins
If you would like to see another magical sculpture from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a portrait of Bottom the Weaver transformed into a donkey can be found in the Pedersen Shakespeare Gallery just a short walk to the east, adjacent to the Balcony Bards Seminar Grove.