a midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare. The forest is the green space of the play where magical spells can be cast, Fairies reign, and where the strict arm of Athenian law cannot reach. Think of a place like this in the modern world where people might go to experience an alternative and liberating night!

What this question addresses is what the seminal Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin calls the "carnivalesque." It is grounded in the notion of the carnival as a time of celebration in which people are freed from normal cultural constraints and values. It is exemplified by the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, but the tradition continues to be widely celebrated, in such traditions as the Carnival in Brazil and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In the time and space of the carnival, master may become slave, slave may act as a free person, and people may cross-dress or otherwise challenge the boundaries of gender and other cultural norms. Bakhtin sees the carnivalesque as inherently subversive. The forest episodes in A Midsummer Night's Dream create a sort of carnivalesque; the scenes lie outside the constraints of ordinary laws and norms. The forest is a place where magic can become real and young women and men can interact freely outside the normal social constraints of their period. 
In modern society, the festivals before Lent are the classic examples of carnivals, but other carnivalesque spaces might include Las Vegas and gambling casinos located on tribal lands, carnivals and amusement parks, cruise ships, resort destinations, and even online gaming worlds which exist as places where people escape from everyday life into a world of fantasy.