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‘The Bed Trick’ at Chance Theater — From left, Zoe Hertzberg, Sophia Blake and Mae Linh Young. Photo courtesy Eric Keitel Photography

By OC Theatre Guild

September 16, 2026

Written for OC Theatre Guild by Anne Reid

Chance Theater

‘The Bed Trick’

When: Sept. 11 – Oct. 4, 2026

Where: Bette Aitken Theater Arts Center, 5522 E. La Palma Avenue, Anaheim

More Info: 888-455-4212, www.ChanceTheater.com

Shakespeare’s centuries-old “bed trick” gets a decidedly modern makeover in “The Bed Trick,” Keiko Green’s contemporary comedy about sex, friendship, deception and consent at Chance Theater in Anaheim.

Directed by H. Adam Harris, the California premiere follows three college freshmen, Lulu, Marianne and Harriet, as they navigate the complicated realities of young adulthood, relationships and sex. When Lulu discovers her boyfriend has an online dating profile, the revelation sets off a series of deceptions, unexpected encounters and shifting relationships that test the boundaries of friendship and consent.

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The play takes its inspiration from William Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well,” which famously employs a “bed trick,” a theatrical device in which one person is deceived into sleeping with another through a substitution made under cover of darkness.

Green brings that centuries-old device into the present, using it to ask a much more contemporary question: What does consent really mean, and who gets to decide?

The play’s journey to a full production at Chance began more than three years ago, when Green was the theater’s resident playwright.

“In May of 2023, Keiko was talking to me about what she’d like to work on during her upcoming LAB Workshop at Chance,” said James Michael McHale, Chance’s literary manager. “She told me about a commission for a play that she’d received from Seattle Shakespeare Co. that they wanted to produce the following year. The kicker: She hadn’t even written it yet.”

McHale said Green described the proposed play as “an exploration of one of the most problematic devices used in Shakespeare: the bed trick” that would place the device “into conversation with consent culture in universities.”

“I said, ‘Let’s do it!’” McHale said.

The workshop began with little more than half of Green’s first draft completed. By August 2023, just over three months after Green first told McHale about the premise, he was watching the completed play being read for an audience.

“I sat in the theater and watched as audiences rolled with laughter one moment, then sucked in air in surprise tension another, only to continue laughing a moment later at this hilarious and insightful play,” McHale said. “To say I was delighted with the process is an understatement.”

“I was honored and thrilled that we got to be a part in this play’s infancy,” McHale said. “And after the success of its world premiere and subsequent productions in Oregon, I am thrilled that we get to bring this piece back and present a full production to our audiences.”

For Harris, the combination of classical theater and a new work was part of the attraction.

The Minnesota native began his career as an actor before moving primarily into directing. Since relocating to California five years ago, he has continued to develop an artistic practice centered on both classics and new plays, with a particular focus on finding places where the two can intersect. That intersection is at the heart of “The Bed Trick.”

Harris said the production honors Green’s script while allowing the audience to experience much of the story through Harriet’s imagination. The character moves between participating in the action and narrating it, inviting the audience in and out of the world as she sees it.

Shakespeare also has a habit of turning up unexpectedly.

Harris said one of his favorite elements of the play is the way Shakespeare is “randomly inserted” into the contemporary story. His challenge was making sure those moments break through without disrupting the modern world Green has created.

The play also explores the overlap between art and life. One of the characters is involved in a production of “All’s Well That Ends Well,” allowing Shakespeare’s fictional bed trick to collide with questions of consent unfolding in the characters’ own lives.

Harris said he was attracted to the way the play speaks to “navigating being an artist” while also trying to figure out what love is and confronting the inevitable messiness that comes when theater and life begin to merge.

The subject matter also connects with Harris’ background as an educator. Before moving to California, he taught theater at a conservatory high school, where his teaching included a class centered on consent, wellness and intimacy, all issues he said adults too rarely discuss openly with young people.

That experience informs the way he approaches Green’s characters.

For Harris, it is important that the production be honest about the confusion and shame that can accompany young people’s first experiences with relationships, sex and adulthood without turning its college-age characters into caricatures.

“Young people starting out in life are having a tough time,” Harris said.

“The Bed Trick” also marks Harris’ return to Chance Theater after directing Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick… Boom!” in 2025.

Harris said his relationship with Chance grew after he became acquainted with the theater while working at South Coast Repertory, where Harris serves as artistic and audience engagement associate.

Casting the six-person production brought more than 191 actors into consideration, in addition to video submissions.

Harris praised casting director Shinshin Yuder Tsai and said the process ultimately came down to finding the right actor for each role and then discovering how those choices worked together as an ensemble.

The cast includes Mae Linh Young as Marianne, Zoe Hertzberg as Lulu, Sophia Blake as Harriet, Khoi Le as Willis, Erik Dylan Matibag as Benny and Chance resident artist Karen O’Hanlon as Anna.

Harris said he has been particularly impressed by the cast’s rigor in rehearsal and its ability to quickly incorporate direction.

“If I give them notes on Monday, those have been incorporated by Wednesday,” Harris said. “I love artists who are rigorous, and these artists are walking that walk and talking that talk.”

Creating the many locations of Green’s story on the Cripe Stage has also required the design team to do some heavy lifting.

Scenic designer Fred Kinney, who has worked with Harris on previous productions, created a world that must accommodate a college dorm room, professor’s office, campus quad and club, among other locations.

Lighting designer Andrew Hungerford helps distinguish those worlds and establish the passage of time. Because the dorm room is imagined on an third story with a tree visible outside its window, Harris said lighting becomes particularly important in showing changes in the time of day.

Sound designer Lia Weed, whose work Harris admired in Chance’s “Sweeney Todd,” helps propel the story through its transitions while building momentum toward what Harris describes as an increasingly “epic and chaotic” moment.

Costume designer Ayrika Johnson, meanwhile, faced a different challenge: making the college students look like young people actually dress today while using clothing to help distinguish the three central women.

The result, Harris hopes, is a production that can be provocative without losing its sense of humor, one that treats its young characters and their choices seriously while embracing the absurdity, confusion and comedy that surround them.

“We’re excited about bringing the story to life,” Harris said.

For Harris, whose work ranges from Shakespeare and other classics to the development of new plays, “The Bed Trick” sits comfortably between those two worlds, a contemporary story that uses a centuries-old theatrical device to examine questions that remain anything but settled.