I didn't ask to be attacked in this way, but my daughter just walked in and informed me that a) Lent starts next week, and b) her 16th birthday is on Ash Wednesday. I ought to be meditating on the passage of time, or considering my end, but my first thought was, "Well, good thing I didn't schedule play rehearsals on Wednesday, because I can't cancel anything this close to the show."
I am directing Twelfth Night for our community theater, and we perform March 11-13, which is within three weeks of rehearsal from now. This week, next week, tech week, and then the show. It is not enough time. We're not quite done blocking the entire show, and then we'll need to start running. I told people to be off book on February 27, which is rich considering that I haven't looked at my own lines outside of rehearsal. (Besides directing, I am playing Maria, and Darwin is Sir Toby, and Julia is Olivia, and Isabel is one of a quartet of Fabians, and William is the Servant with one line in Act 3.4 and one line I took from my lines.)
Twelfth Night is my favorite Shakespeare, and I've teched it at least twice, so I have quite a passing familiarity with the script, besides that I work it three nights a week now and for at least an hour a day of prep. That's one reason why I'm not too worried (yet) about memorization. Another is that I've turned over a number of my lines to the Fabians, a gaggle of maidservants who are always underfoot causing mischief. It is a truth of theater, especially of the community variety, that you end up tailoring the show to the talent. In this case, we had several young ladies who were excellent and yet not quite right for Olivia or Viola, and so, in trying to see how we could add servants to support Fabian, we just ended up splitting the role four ways. The Fabians are a great comic presence and have a lot of stage time even in scenes where they have no lines, so it's not a bit part for anyone.
Some might call it nepotism, but I cast my daughter as Olivia because that way I got her boyfriend as Sebastian, and let me tell you that it is pulling teeth to get young men for a show. Then my daughter's co-worker was interested in trying out, and she's exactly the same height as the boyfriend, so that netted me my Viola. Sebastian and Viola both have fun personalities and are picking up on each other's quirks, netting me new character facets that I hadn't considered just reading the script.
The show is set in that period known as "Old Fashioned". We have boots and jazz shoes. We have hats and wigs from the costume stash. We have a Hamilton dress my daughter made for Halloween. Between Darwin and our producer, we have several fencing foils. Illyria is red and Messaline is green, which helps us tailor our choices. As we've dug into costumes, we've been delving into character. What does Orsino wear? Military jackets. He's in charge of the troops, only he's not there now because he's wounded, which is why he doesn't go see Olivia himself. And Olivia doesn't like him because her brother died in the war. And Antonio is also in danger, because he fought on Messaline's side. And that's why Viola doesn't want anyone to know who she is in the beginning! And that's why her father has talked of Duke Orsino, the bachelor... And so everything starts to come together.
There's some music in the play. We have a guitar player, and our Feste is a good singer, so I've been tinkering with tunes to get something we can master in our short time. Come Away Death fits to the tune of Greensleeves. The Rain it Raineth Everyday, for which we know the original tune, can be sung a capella like a sea shanty. We know what O Mistress Mine sounded like, but the Elizabethan setting isn't doing for me, so my brother and I worked up the tune into a Postmodern Jukebox arrangement, and, for my sins, I am learning the ukelele at age 43.
Twelfth Night is a great play. It's also the play I've seen most in person -- just by happenstance I've seen several different productions, including a stripped-down minimalist take by the Royal Shakespeare Company. My very favorite one, though, I saw in college that was put on by the drama department. They did it in an early twentieth-century jazz-club setting (a little bit Prohibition, a little bit Depression, a little bit Casablanca), lots of soft blue lighting for many of the scenes, with Duke Orsino, given some of the things that happen, clearly a little bit on the mafioso side. They replaced some of Shakespeare's songs with era songs -- include "As Time Goes By" -- which was perhaps not ideal, but worked very well nonetheless. Twelfth Night, at least, has an immense adaptability for creative play with period, costume, music, and the like; I think it has a story that can play off a wide range of different aesthetics in a wide variety of ways, giving each production a very different feel.
ReplyDeleteOh, I wish I'd thought of a 20s setting -- it would have been easier to costume than "vaguely Elizabethan". And the girls could have worn their character shoes, which they always like. On the other hand, my space wouldn't be easily adapted for a speakeasy, but it won't be hard to build a quasi-town-square set.
ReplyDeleteIn doing research for this show, I watched a dreadful Royal Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night in which neither Viola or Olivia could act, so it's nice to knw that whatever happens with our show, we'll be better than the RSC by default. We did enjoy a 2018 modern-day movie that featured the same actress playing Viola and Sebastian. I can take or leave the 1996 film with Helena Bonham-Carter -- it's not terrible, but I quibble with some of the direction.
Just this evening I discovered that my Sebastian is a proficient ukelele player, so now he's in the O Mistress Mine scene, wearing a beard and a big college graduation gown that zips over his costume. And that's how we do it off-off-off-off-Broadway.