It is. It’s basically a dual love story. It’s an interesting play — it’s hard to say whether it’s about Hero and Claudio or whether it’s about Beatrice and Benedick. It’s about two couples on similar, but not really parallel, paths toward marriage.  <snip ... more in article>

Why did you decide to swap the gender roles of Beatrice and Benedick? 

To update it. There’s been 400 years of history since Shakespeare wrote these plays and there have been countless places and times where there was a really apt parallel to what was happening in the plays. Most of them are very adaptable to different times, different places. I once directed “The Merchant of Venice” in modern dress. <snip ... more in article>

Can you tell me more about your decision to turn Leonato, Hero’s father, into Leonora, her mother? 

This was not just to make more roles for women, which is a very worthy goal. It was specifically to change the relationship between Leonato and Hero into a mother-daughter relationship to examine how much of the patriarchy that is very much in effect in this play is inherently male or inherently institutional, and how much of it is about the individuals that are in this drama. 

For more see the full article:  Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ comes to North Berkeley’s John Hinkel Park — with a twist