Ansley Tillman, Arts and Entertainment Editor
There’s nothing quite like watching actors in pool-side attire recite 16th century poetry while shooting each other with water guns. This is merely a glimpse of the fantastic student-led production of “Twelfth Night: Or What You Will.” Performed in Angel Park, this production led its audience through the dramatic and comical story of Viola and Sebastian.
“Twelfth Night,” in classic Shakespearean style, is a comedic series of mishaps and mischief. It centers around two twins who are separated by a shipwreck. The sister, Viola, assumes her brother to be dead and disguises herself as a man to work for nobleman Duke Orsino. Orsino is madly in love with a woman named Lady Olivia. In a surprising turn of events, Olivia ends up falling in love with the disguised Viola and Viola falls in love with Orsino. This sets the stage for tensions and comedic errors.
The production team of “Twelfth Night” did a phenomenal job of taking a Shakespearean work and making the experience vivid for the audience. The costumes, rather than being period pieces, were centered around a pool party energy theme. This gave some modern context and contributed to the mid-summer, hazy madness that is often a theme Shakesphere incorporated into his plays.
Stage Manager Gray Leal (C ‘28) commented about the more modern route they took with the show. “I think it made it more fun than straight academic Shakespeare would have been, which I appreciated.”
Because of the plot’s romantic hijinks, something that the cast considered was how much to focus on the gender of the actors versus the illusion Viola provided while pretending to be a man. When they were casting, they did not consider the assigned genders of the characters more than whose acting matched with the character’s personality and story.
Leal said that they “kind of leaned away from the really gendered parts of the show and we focused more on things like Viola pretending to be a man, rather that she is an outsider…It was an all female non-cis cast and it was really cool to be involved with.”
The Twelfth Night performance had everyone sitting on the edge of their picnic blankets. The sense of community and joy everyone involved in production enveloped the audience in an unforgettable night of fun.