In this 'Dream,' gender roles are blurred

In the Boston Theatre Works production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," now in previews, Paula Plum is playing Hippolyta , the conquered Amazon queen who's now betrothed to Theseus, a duke. That's normal enough. But she's also playing Oberon , king of the fairies. That is definitely out of the ordinary.

Double-casting roles in "Dream" has become commonplace since 1970 , when British director Peter Brook created a groundbreaking production in which Oberon and Theseus were played by the same actor and Hippolyta and Titania , queen of the fairies, by the same actress. Theaters have followed Brook's lead, often for economic reasons.

But few, says Boston Theatre Works director Daniel Elihu Kramer , have double-cast across gender. Kramer has also cast Timothy John Smith as both Theseus and Titania. Robert Pemberton , who only has to play one role, Bottom, is also in the cast.

There's method in his gender-bending madness. Kramer, who also directed "Romeo and Juliet" for Boston Theatre Works in 1999, says he wants to provide new perspectives on power in this comedy about misplaced love that takes place on one magical night. Theseus and Hippolyta enter the fairy world and dream their other roles.

"What happens in the dream world, the fairy world, is a whole series of transformations," Kramer says by phone. "The way the problems are presented at the beginning -- who should marry whom -- gets resolved when people learn to change. So things happen at the end of the play that don't seem possible at the beginning. Partly it's because people get these new perspectives through their journey through the woods."

Plum plays two characters at opposite ends of the power spectrum.

"Hippolyta's problem at the beginning is how powerless she is," Kramer says. "Then she gets this very different experience. The flip side is that Theseus is operating from an enormous sense of power and then he's offered a change of perspective of having this dream of being Titania, queen of the fairies."

The gender switch, he says, has given both actors permission to pursue different ideas of femininity and masculinity.

"I'm not trying to convey to anyone that I'm a man," Plum says by phone. "I'm a woman playing a male role. The difference is that you sort of drop the border of your own sexual stereotypes and you're allowed to explore a whole other gender."

Plum has played male roles before, including a 17-year-old boy in her one-woman show "Plum Pudding," and she directed an all-women production of Sam Shepard's "True West" in a Boston Conservatory class she teaches.

"There was such freedom in the discovery of what it was to be a guy," she says. "It opened the other half of the circle. We're always searching for our other half. So in playing this I've been allowed entry into that male world. It's interesting. When you assume power you actually have to try less hard."

She laughs. "It's not about being aggressive and powerful and forceful. You gather power to you, you don't push to affect it. It's about owning the space."

Opens tomorrow night and runs through March 3 at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre. Tickets: $22-$35. 617-933-8600. bostontheatreworks.com.

Pieter-Dirk Uys's one-man show, "Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun," originally scheduled to run at American Repertory Theatre's Zero Arrow Theatre April 4-29 , has been postponed. Replacing it is the New England premiere of storyteller Mike Daisey in "Invincible Summer," in the same slot. Uys in a statement cited the pressures of running his own theater in South Africa and said he hopes to return to the ART in 2008.

For those curious about performances in the Northeast of the plays Suzan-Lori Parks wrote over the course of a year, StageSource has become the official website host. And local companies are getting onboard. Theaters planning spring productions include: Company One, Lyric Stage Company, Zeitgeist Stage Company, and Emerson Stage; Wellesley Summer Theatre plans a production; and New Repertory Theatre, Queer Soup, SpeakEasy Stage Company, and the Nora Theatre Company are among those who will stage fall productions . For more information, visit stagesource.org/365ne.cfm.