For this year's edition of shows, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company artistic director Ian Gallanar has gone big, and small.

The first production, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," will be done on a grand scale, he says, with the troupe "making the whole area of the ruins into a performance space.

"One of the things that I love about performing up there is that it's really not just about the play itself," he says. "It's really a complete event."

To that end, Gallanar and company have fashioned an environment he characterizes as "a Victorian carnival," with related activities he's leaving as a surprise. "We usually have entertainment activities but these connected hopefully directly to the production we're doing," he says.

The troupe has designed the weekend of June 17-19 as "Faerie Weekend" and is encouraging theater goers to cast off their inhibitions and go dressed as a "favorite faerie, elf, sprite or pixie." Friday and Saturday evening have been deemed "grown up faerie time," while Sunday's 6 p.m. performance will be a "family day Faerie event."

Come July 1, the troupe will unveil a much smaller production, a three-actor satire known as "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)."

The play pokes fun of the Bard's writing style and characters by recasting his ideas in sillier contexts. For example, the women's roles are played by men in wigs and dresses.

"It appeals to both Shakespeare lovers and Shakespeare haters," Gallanar admits. "We can usually get the Shakespeare lovers up here, but sometimes it's hard to get the Shakespeare haters to see our Shakespeare."

One of the reasons for staging the play, Gallanar says, is that it offered a balance to the summer's much bigger first production.

"Our 'Midsummer' project is so huge. It involves a lot of stuff not just on the stage but off the stage," Gallanar explains. "So we wanted to find something that we liked that was good but was less intensive in terms of using people."