Alright, folks, let’s dive into the vibrant world of the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival with our spotlight on "A Dream of Midsummer," presented by the Brawling Bard Theater! This show runs from March 21 to March 28, 2026, at the super chill Mettā: A Healing Arts Community. We're breaking down the wild and wacky chaos of what happens when a cast prepares for the wrong show—yep, you heard that right! We’re chatting with Alan Irvin, the artistic director, about how he’s been mixing Shakespeare with slapstick comedy and brawling since day one. Seriously, if you’re looking for a night filled with laughter, unexpected twists, and the chance to see some epic stage combat, you better grab your tickets now at pittsburghfringe.org. So, let’s get ready to jump into this theatrical rollercoaster and celebrate the mad magic that is Fringe!

A Dream of Midsummer

Company: Brawling Bard Theater

Date(s): March 21, 2026 - March 28, 2026

Time(s): Various Times

https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/a-dream-of-midsummer/

Venue: Mettā: A Healing Arts Community

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Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and this is part of our preview for the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival.

I know this is outside of the typical Rochester and surrounding area content, but the Fringe is universal, and we're thrilled to partner with the Pittsburgh team for their 13th year running from March 19th to the 28th.

To learn more about all of the shows and get Tickets, go to pittsburghfringe.org Tickets cap out at $20, and an entire event pass is only 150.

So make sure to get your tickets today and join the action over on Penn Ave. And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hi.

I am Alan Irvin, the artistic director of Brawling Bard Theater.

We have been with the Fringe since the very first year.

So we are excited to be back.

Yeah.

And I saw you have joined.

You've joined Fringe in my city, Rochester, New York.

So nice to talk to somebody who's visited my city.

And I'm going to come visit Pittsburgh for the SEC for the second weekend of Fringe this year.

All right, we'll be looking forward to seeing you there.

Absolutely.

So now we're going to start talking about the brawling part.

But I got to say, there's not a lot of interviews I do where when I looked into all of the things you do, I'm like, one, there's no way I can keep this to half an hour, even though I have to keep it to half an hour.

But, like, I didn't know where to start.

But let's just start with Brawling Bard.

So, one.

What.

What about Shakespeare brings out your pugilistic side, Alan?

Well, it kind of goes back to our beginning.

I'm a big Shakespeare fan, and when we started the company and it was.

We was also a friend of mine named Tanya Lynn, we put it together to do a show for the very first Fringe.

We threw a proposal in and it got accepted, and we realized, oh, so I guess that means we need to write show and put it together.

That's.

I love that.

I love.

That's part of the culture of Fringe.

Like, we're just gonna say we're gonna do a show and we're gonna figure it out before it happens.

Yeah.

And what it really came down to is Tanya is a stage combat person.

In fact, that's what she does professionally now.

She was just kind of starting out towards that, towards doing it professionally when we started.

So part of the idea for that first show was also a place for her to do all the fight stuff that she didn't normally get to do in the small shows that brought her in.

Kind of a place to really spread her wings and do some fun stuff.

So part of the writing of that show, as I was writing it, was periodically to call her up and say, okay, so here's what I got so far.

What other fights do you want in here?

What else do you want to do?

So that put the brawling in right from the beginning, and every show we've done since, that's been sort of part of it.

If not fights, at least a lot of physical comedy and fight, like action.

Yeah, well.

And I think that's also, you know, the diversity of different ways you can portray work that, you know, people have seen versions of or, you know, even single lines from, to provide, you know, different angles and different takes on it, I think is kind of the joy of being involved in that community of performing these classic works.

Yeah.

Although the challenge is also to do as little as possible.

The notes I often get when I'm writing a new show and starting to run it by the company is, that's too much Shakespeare.

Right.

Challenge is always cutting back on the Shakespeare.

If I'm doing a show, particularly like this one, that is a single play, I'm usually working with the text.

But, yeah, we are not a Shakespeare company.

We're a comedy and physical comedy bit that messes with Shakespeare.

So it's getting that balance where there's enough of the Shakespeare for those who are the Shakespeare fans and want that.

And.

But not so much it becomes a Shakespeare show because a lot of people are coming for the comedy bit of it.

Well, and I think that it reminds me of other, you know, modern.

Modern art forms in many ways.

You know, as, you know, like, I'm a wrestling fan, for example, and, like, there's so many different angles.

Like, you can be the most technical, you can be a comedy wrestler, you can be all these different things.

And they all live within the same.

That same world of performing, this genre of art form.

And I think that's where in a modern context, this.

Using Shakespeare as a lens for performance in anything is completely valid, which is really cool.

Yeah.

And that's.

We want to have fun with bringing shows usually that people are familiar with.

Once or twice we've done a show specifically that nobody knows, just so that we can play with it and say, hey, here's this obscure thing that he did as well.

But, yeah, we're really looking at it as a Jumping off place to do a lot of fun stuff and try out some ideas.

One, I love the concept of this one, so I'm just going to.

I'm going to use the text at the beginning so you know when basically the team has prepared for the wrong show and you're doing an unplanned, unrehearsed Midsummer's Night Dream, which just sounds like delightful chaos in the best possible way.

Yeah, that's.

That's what we're going for.

Controlled chaos is a good description, particularly for this one.

And, yeah, coming up with some reason.

We're coming in.

It was fun.

This is one of the shows we did take up to Rochester about 10 years ago.

Awesome.

Which gave us a great reason to be running in with the wrong show.

It's like, you know, we just arrived in Rochester last night.

We went to the wrong place or just here.

And right from the beginning, you're starting to set up sort of the.

The chaos that's going to come.

Yeah.

And didn't mention the venue.

So the venue for this is Meta Healing Arts Community.

It's a yoga studio.

And you're performing five shows there.

Two on the 21st at 2 and 4, one on the 27th at 8, and then two on the 28th at 3 and 7.

And tickets are $15 at pittsburghfringe.org what about this venue?

You interested you when you were.

When you were planning this one when it came about.

This is a new venue for us.

We used another one for a couple of years and we're looking at that.

But also just putting out.

Maybe we want to move to another place.

And it was actually the response from the venue, they came back really excited saying, oh, yeah, we love the idea for the show.

I think it would fit in really nice here.

And so that was kind of the hook that, oh, yeah, I want to go someplace that's excited.

Also.

It's one that has been a venue for the Fringe for a number of years and has other shows in.

So being in a space where there's kind of a community of performers and other people coming in, whereas the space we'd use for the last year or two, we were the only show in there which also had its advantages.

But in the past, we've been places where, yeah, we're one of two or three shows, and that's kind of fun.

And being right in the heart of the.

The Fringe footprint, that was kind of neat.

And then playing with the venue, once I got there and sort of looked around, there's stuff in the neighborhood like right across the street, that started to build in quick.

That's.

I won't mention what.

Don't want to ruin some surprises there, but it's like looking.

I said, oh, we can reference that so we can make use of this.

Yeah, that's always fun.

That's very cool.

So when you know, is, you know, somebody who's done a lot of obviously writing and working with the company and looking at, you know, performing through the lens of Shakespeare, is that something you enjoyed when you were younger?

Is that something you came into later in life?

How would you describe your relationship with the works in general?

I've always enjoyed Shakespeare and I remember even back in high school and possibly even earlier, just love the plays in of themselves and doing little bits and pieces.

Sometimes like a talent show or something, I pull out a speech to perform.

It wasn't something I didn't come in, go into theater or even ever think about writing a play.

I got in a theater later.

My main performing background is actually as a storyteller and I've performed both at Pittsburgh and Rochester doing storytelling shows.

But I've always loved theater as well as Shakespeare specific.

And as I said, we were sort of kicking around ideas and when the idea got accepted, it was not only, oh, now we need to put the show together, it was, oh, that means somebody needs to write it.

And I guess the somebody is me.

So that's how I became a playwright.

I mean, what.

What better time than then?

And actually you brought.

One of the things I was, you know, interested in talking about is storytelling as an art form.

You know, I'm somebody who is recorded very often.

I do a lot of interviews.

I've done.

I've done the, you know, on stage storytelling only once.

It was part of a.

Part of our, you know, local newspaper was doing that.

And it's a such a different experience of formulating and practicing and working through a story and working on the beats and all those things.

It's less of the read and react part of interviews that I love so much, but there is something very.

There's something very special about when you hear a story that grabs you on stage in that specific way.

When did you start doing storytelling and what about it was really appealing to you?

I started back when I was in college and I worked at summer camps as a camp counselor and just started telling stories in the cabin after lights out, mostly to kind of fill the time.

I knew a couple of ghost stories, a couple of old Irish folktales, these well enough to kind of improvise my way through.

And it was a way of kind of connecting both, settling the kids down, but also, you know, building a rapport with the guys in the cabin.

Yeah, yeah.

So that was my start.

About three summers during the school year, I'd learned one or two new stories so I'd have something new to bring in.

And we do stuff around bonfires and things like that and then just kind of went from there, starting to learn other stories.

When I moved up to here, to Pittsburgh, that's when I encountered other storytellers and started to be able to learn the craft of it and take workshops and local weekend conferences, workshops and things.

So to place where I could go and.

Yeah, just refine that my understanding of the art a bit more.

Yeah.

And I find it interesting because, you know, my, my awareness of it as a, you know, as a art form came from.

And I'm going to use a term, and you please correct me if I'm wrong, because you're way more involved in the community than I am.

But to me, when I became familiar was.

I'm going to use the term resurgence, you know, in the late aughts when I started, you know, listening to, you know, listening to the Moth podcast, listening to when I heard it on this American Life first was, you know, people telling stories from, you know, that were from the Moth.

And then I picked up from it from there during, you know, earlier in the run.

And there was something about it that felt very authentic.

And there were people on, you know, this American Life that were, you know, solo storytellers or monologuers or different, you know, that's, that's.

They just said audio journals or whatever.

And they all lived in this world of somebody with this experience or somebody who's lived something.

Got to tell it in this fascinating way.

What was the community like when you joined it?

Because for me that, that seemed very fully formed, you know, in the, you know, late aughts.

How.

How did you.

How did you get into it and what was the community like then?

So I came in, yeah, kind of in the.

The 80s and.

And 90s.

And so our, our modern resurgence starts really kind of 60s and 70s, coming out of the whole resurgence of folk arts somewhat centered here in Pittsburgh.

There was at the University of Pittsburgh Library School, there was an instructor there who really put forth this idea that storytelling is something that particularly children's librarians should be doing.

Been a kind of resurgence of that like in the 20s and 30s, and she was bringing that back.

So she had a popular storytelling course on how to do it for librarians.

And a number of those people stayed around here in Pittsburgh.

So there was a kind of fully formed community that had grown out of that.

And at that point, the emphasis was very much on traditional folk tales, legends, things like that.

So that's where I kind of came in on this.

At the same time, we're getting a national resurgence.

It was not just here in Pittsburgh and people branching out into other types of stories.

And a fellow named Donald Davis, who is still around and performing, I think, really pioneered the idea of the personal story sort of memoir that eventually things like the Moth does pick up.

And.

Yeah, so the Moth and this American Life and those things come in and kind of a second wave, next generation of people, and to some extent, kind of reinventing what was already going on, because they weren't quite aware of that until it was up and running and then started to make these connections between these two different movements.

They kind of had to be interesting to have seen it from then and then saw that, you know, either, you know, that change in direction or that visibility.

You know, there's.

You know, sometimes there can be the attitude of, oh, you know, now that this is popular, now that it's mainstream, it's not the same.

It's not.

It's not what it was.

How did that grab you when.

When you were, you know, living through that as being part of that community?

Well, it's interesting because, again, with the Moth and those types of shows, of course, the focus was very much just on the personal story.

Yeah.

And so part of the connections would be to also introduce people into, oh, there is all this other world.

The Moth.

Yeah.

Made a lot of people like you kind of aware that, oh, storytelling exists.

Yeah.

And then some of the challenge was, okay, and that's really good.

But here's these other things as well.

In that.

That same period, we were just starting up a local storytelling festival here in Pittsburgh that ran for about 10 years.

And so that was one of the connections, to try and make connections into the Moth audience and even bring some of the local Moth people to the festival, which we.

I think we did manage to do that a couple of times kind of towards the end of the run.

Yeah.

And so their audience in and then maybe bring some of us to them and the connections.

So, yeah, it was this nice little kind of cross fertilization because we were doing different stuff, but very complementary stuff.

Yeah.

And it seems like, you know, a lot of the things that you do surround storytelling in so many different forms, Whether it be, you Know, historical, you know, doing recordings and also doing.

Doing tours, which is, you know, both environmental and engaging with your surroundings and engaging with history.

It seems like that's kind of like a perfect confluence of all the things that you're passionate about.

Yeah.

So the.

The tours are walking tours here in Pittsburgh, and that is very much when I'm coming in.

I bring those sort of skills.

I do a lot of stories, and one of the tours I do is a ghost story tour, and that does have bits where, okay, we're gonna just stop here in this place for 10, 15 minutes so I can give you the full story, not just throw some facts at you.

Yeah.

Which, as you say, it's fun because then we're in the space.

It's like, oh, this happens right over there, and soak up the.

The ambiance of the place and kind of play off of that.

But, yeah, the.

The tour guide stuff draws a lot on the storytelling skills.

Well, and I think that's the other thing is you don't.

You don't know the audience you're going to have that day.

And I'm sure it, you know, it allows you to stretch with.

Sometimes you are improving and bringing stuff in because they want to learn about something.

They ask a question.

And I always love that side of.

That side of interviewing that side of, you know, talking to somebody is.

You don't know where the conversation is going to go.

You might have a plan, but, you know, as, you know, as Mike Tyson always says, you always have a plan until you get punched in the face, which ties back to the Shakespeare show.

But, you know, there's.

You don't know where you're going to go, even though you have a plan to start with.

Yeah.

And with the tour, there's kind of this structure to always kind of bring me back.

But, yeah, the punch in the face for that is often somebody asking a question that nobody's asked before or say, oh, what's that building over there that I don't usually mention?

And then we're off and kind of running with that.

Yeah.

And I love that, you know, those live pivots.

I think that's the joy sometimes.

But it also forces you to know more than what you planned or, you know, know more about the place you're around.

And you.

You might tell 10% of what you have, what you're passing, but, you know, 60%.

And that.

That's.

That's.

So those are those delightful moments where you can be that for somebody by doing the work and by being passionate about something.

Absolutely.

And a nice illustration of that is I did a tour with just.

It was just a couple who are in town visiting, and the poem is, we're talking that usually they go into some place and they got the phones and they're doing the Google.

What's that building, Learning about it, and they enjoy that.

But I think they were working with a travel agent that suggested the tour and the really neat thing.

And the reward for me at the end, we finished the tour and the guy said, you know what?

We're always booking a tour after this, wherever we go.

Oh, yeah, we've learned so much more than we ever would have just walking around with Google on our phones.

Yeah, that's.

That's what we're hoping for.

Yeah.

So I got a couple.

Couple more questions before we close out.

So one like, you came to Pittsburgh and you stayed.

What.

What is it about.

What is it about the city that kept you, that kept you there versus going on to another place?

What is it about Pittsburgh that be, you know, is part of you now?

Well, part of it was the storytelling because I was starting to do a lot of that by that point.

It is the history.

We have a lot of history going back to French and Indian War beyond.

And not all just steel, although that's a piece of it.

I've been getting into a lot in the last couple of years.

But as the culture is a lot of theater and a lot of performing, one of the challenges the Fringe has is that there is so much other theater going on in Pittsburgh that it's kind of hard to break through and sometimes catch the attention for this particular type of.

So just the whole cultural mix.

And it's a beautiful place, which often surprises people who haven't been here.

And yeah, I can go on and give you a whole two hour tour

of that, but I kind of figured you could.

So we got.

We got five minutes left.

So I want you to.

Want you to tell me just some great things about the rest of the.

About the cast, about, you know, the whole, you know, the people in the troupe.

And then I want to finish off with tell me one place to go eat in Pittsburgh when I come to visit, I'm always learning about that.

That's how I dive into everything.

So.

So first tell me about the cast and then tell me a place I Should go to eat when I come to town.

All right.

Well, the cast is one of things I like to talk about, because that's one of the fun things about Brawling Bard is we are kind of an established troupe, so it is a core group of performers, some one of whom does go back to the very first show.

Many have been for numbers of shows, and that is great for me as a playwright, because as people perform, you kind of develop a sense for their voice and their rhythms, and so I can write for particular people, knowing that this guy's going to be able to handle this.

Michael Makita kind of came in on the first show and has been with us ever since, and so he is.

Is great on this.

And Ramat is our fight coordinator now.

When Tanya left, an's actually one of her students.

So Tanya gave her a blessing for an to come in.

And it's kind of fun because she started with us on the fourth show, and that's where she actually got a taste of Stage Combats is coming in.

And as we heard early in rehearsals, and I could see on her face, I'd worked with her in a couple of shows, and that's why I brought her in and could see her say, what did I get myself into?

And at this point, my daughter, who was in high school and has gone on to do Stage combat, she was part of the company.

And so it's just like, okay, Elizabeth, would you take Anne over and teach her how to get punched?

And that's what got Ann started.

And I said, that's one thing she does professionally as well.

And so having her go from performer first kind of nervousness to really being my collaborator and let's design fights and stuff together is really great.

Oh, that has to be super rewarding, too.

Absolutely.

And another thing that's fun about ongoing troop and working with the community is people also learn the process and learn that, absolutely, it's fine to sort of jump in and say, wait, this isn't working, or, well, that joke's not really good, or, wait, can we change this?

Because the fight needs to go this way or that.

And the companies learned that, yeah, they can do all of that.

They've also learned is something Michael warns any new cast member about, to be careful what you say when we're joking around in rehearsal, because anything you say in rehearsal might end up in the show.

And in fact, that happened.

There's a bit where we're assigning parts in this one, and Alex Makita gets assigned Titania, and then Michael gets Assigned Nick bottom.

As you may guess, since they're both Makita, they are related.

It's father, daughter.

And in our first sort of read through, and we were talking about this, she said, okay, but do not make me Titania, because I do not want to do a love scene with my father.

Which we all agreed, yeah, that would not work.

But it was like, oh, that is such a fun thing to play with that.

That is how the parts originally get assigned in our first panic.

Until she objects and say, no, I'm not doing this.

Yeah.

Oh, you're right.

Yeah, we gotta change this.

So.

So being able to build those things in is fun.

Andy Cole, this is, I think, his fifth, fourth or fifth show with us, and he's become sort of one of the.

The core people.

And Andy is just kind of game for anything.

And we sometimes have to ratchet down some of his enthusiasm.

Like, Andy, when I push, you don't go flying across the stage, just giving you a little push.

So.

And then we're always bringing in new people as well.

And Gwen Norsek, the last member of the cast, she is new this year, and she is coming in for a role that actually was originally written for Tonya Lin when she was here.

And it's a bit of a smaller role.

It's sort of off to the sides, which is then an easy role to bring someone in, particularly because she has more conflicts in her rehearsal schedule, which was the case with Tanya, who had the original part.

So the part is written for.

You've got less blocking, so it's okay if you can't.

You know, if you've got.

She can't make, like our weekend rehearsals, it's okay because half the scenes you're sitting over there just handing people random stuff.

So I love that.

And I just want to finish off with.

If I'm going to one place in Pittsburgh, what's the place I should go?

Oh, and that is such a hard question.

I've been running that mind.

Well, the place that everyone goes and it's the place that comes up.

If you Google places to eat in Pittsburgh is Primantes.

Of course.

I think there is a city ordinance that every visitor has to eat at Permanentes.

Yeah.

Famous for the sandwiches that have everything on them.

And by everything, I mean not just your sandwich fixings, but your coleslaw and your French fries.

And the story is these were originally designed.

The original permantes is in a neighborhood that was originally the produce districts.

And so guys would be coming in, this is 30s and 40s bringing in trucks from the farms at 3am having to sit there with the truck.

And it was mealtime for them.

So the sandwich was designed you can have the whole meal in your hand here and eating while you're sitting waiting for them to unload your truck.

Or at least that's the most famous story about the Primanti Sandwich.

Every town has their has their most famous thing with an apocryphal story.

It's kind of the it's one of the joys of learning about food because you end up learning about history and and you learn that every town has it and every story is almost definitely fake.

That are the origins for those things.

But that's part of storytelling and part of performing.

So make sure to go grab your tickets for Brawling Bard Theater over at the Meta Healing Arts community shows on March 21, the 27th and the 28th.

Go to pittsburghfringe.org to get your tickets.

Anything else before we close out?

Alan I think that pretty much covers it.

It's going to be a really fun show.

So.

And come prepared to possibly get pulled into it one way or another.

Well, that's part of Fringe.

Getting invested, enjoying the thing.

So thank you so much for joining this episode of Just Can't.

Not if you happen to come up to Rochester.

Just want to listen to some other great shows on the network, go to lunchadore.org and we'll see you out on the Fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchador Podcast Network.

On guard.