The week before a production opens, officially known as Tech Week, often is called by many other more colorful sobriquets.

It’s the week of pulling it all together, but still freaking out because someone doesn’t yet know his lines, and the set is not quite finished.

Actually the backstage scene seemed relatively calm Monday as Vintage High School students were putting the final touches on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” opening Thursday.

The trees are all in place for the forest wherein Shakespeare sets his story of love and magic on a summer’s eve. Director Susan Davis was summoning the troupe of fairies backstage for their final fittings; other students were still waiting for the rest of their costumes.

“It’s just theater,” explained Amanda Bennett, a senior who is preparing to take her final bow on the Vintage High School stage.

Bennett, who plays the role of Theseus, the duke of Athens, said she’d been in Vintage plays since seventh grade. Nikelle Riggs, another senior in her first role at Vintage, is Philostrate, the master of revels for the duke.

“We’re both men,” she said philosophically.

How is it doing Shakespeare? “It’s just so different,” Bennett said. “You think you know how to act and then you try Shakespeare.”

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most understandable and entertaining comedies,” said Davis. It’s the one where fairies decide to give their own brand of assistance to four helpless mortals, Hermia (Laura Brady) and Lysander (Jeremy Bomar), and Helena (Gabriella Forster) and Demetrius (Samuel Burch), all suffering from problems of love, forbidden or unrequited, who wander into the fairies’ enchanted domain.

The fairies, however, are having their own love problems: Oberon (Kevin Hebenstreit), the fairy king, is in a fit because his queen Titania (Jonie Delfin) is making too much of a young changeling (Forrest Blue) recently stolen from an Indian king. He decides to exact revenge on her by means of a magical love potion. When he places the lively imp Robin Goodfellow — aka Puck — (Lizzi Jones) in charge of this project, with instructions to help the needy mortals as well, all kinds of romantic confusion ensues.

Add to this the antics of a group of tradesmen/actors, who go to the forest to rehearse their play for the duke, and you have what Davis calls “a spring tonic, a dose of imagination.”

The cast also includes J.V. Orrante as Hippolyta, the Amazon queen and Theseus’s bride, and Jon Santana as Egeus, father of Hermia. The troupe of actors is portrayed by Zenia Rios as Nick Bottom, the weaver; Olivia Salina as Peter Quince, the carpenter; William Luippold as Francis Flute, a bellows mender; Lindsay Evans as Tom Snout, the tinker; Ashley Zaragoza as Snug, the joiner, and Sarah Villata as Robin Starveling, the tailor.

Taking the role of fairies are Sasha Hazelton as Mustardseed; Emily Fahey as Peaseblossom; Alyssa-Marie Moreno as Cobweb and Charlene Aoki as Moth.

Cieara Blue is stage manager for the production, assisted by Victoria Bryant. Tim Bacon is in charge of lights.

Performances this week are Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Next week’s shows are May 10, 11 and 12 at 7:30 p.m. The play takes place in the Vintage Little Theater, 1375 Trower Ave. Napa.

Tickets for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are $8 for adults and $5 for students and can be purchased at the door a half hour before the performance.