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GU alum brings A Midsummer's Night Dream to Greenville

Published: July 19, 2022

GU alum brings A Midsummer's Night Dream to Greenville

The group pauses during Thursday's performance to take a selfie with an audience member's cell phone. 

A Greenville University alum who founded a traveling outdoor theater troupe in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic came to Greenville last week to perform William Shakespeare’s whimsical A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Laura Irish, a 2005 GU theater graduate who now lives in New Zealand, brought nine of her theatrical friends on a coast-to-coast tour of the U.S. that included a performance last Thursday on the lawn of the Bond County Courthouse. They spent a few days in Greenville and then visited Rantoul, where Irish was raised, before resuming their tour. They will be in Lennox, Mass., on July 22; Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 25; and in various locations in California from July 27 through Aug. 1. Additional dates are being added as the tour continues.

GU alum brings A Midsummer's Night Dream to GreenvilleThe Barden Party was launched two years ago during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when work had dried up for most musicians and theatrical performers because of restrictions on public gatherings. Irish, pictured at left, gathered several of her unemployed friends to perform in people’s back yards all around New Zealand. The name of the group is a combination of Shakespeare’s nickname as “The Bard” and the idea of small social gatherings in private homes, commonly called “garden parties.” The group contemporized the play and added pop music numbers to engage modern audiences.

Many Greenville University faculty and staff members who knew Irish from her days as a student attended Thursday’s performance and visited with her before and after the two-hour show.

The following is a link to a previous story about The Barden Party that was featured on the GU website in early February: https://www.greenville.edu/news/gu-grad-keeps-theater-alive-in-new-zealand-in-spite-of-covid 

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