Twelfth Night

In the seaside kingdom of Illyria, Duke Orsino pines for Countess Olivia. Olivia has sworn off men during an extended mourning period for her father and brother, and she now refuses the Duke’s visits. Just off the shore, a storm has shipwrecked a young noble woman, Viola. Heartbroken that her twin brother Sebastian died in the shipwreck, leaving her alone in a strange land, Viola disguises herself as the young man “Cesario” and works as a servant in Orsino’s house. Within 3 days, Viola/Cesario has become the Duke’s favorite page. Orsino, still longing for Olivia, sends Cesario to woo her on the Duke’s behalf. However, Viola finds it difficult to achieve this task, as she falls in love with Orsino herself.

Olivia’s maid Maria tries to manage Olivia’s drunken uncle Sir Toby, his acquaintance Sir Andrew and the clownish Feste. Feste playfully convinces Olivia to let him stay, despite the protests of her bitter steward Malvolio. Viola, dressed as Cesario, arrives with the Duke’s message of love for Olivia. Olivia attempts to send Cesario away, but she begins instead to fall for his charms. When Cesario leaves, Olivia sends Malvolio after the ‘boy’ with her ring.

Unbeknownst to all, Viola’s twin brother Sebastian has also washed up upon the Illyrian shore with his savior, Antonio. Sebastian believes his sister is dead. After being cared for by the devoted Antonio for three months, Sebastian sets out to join Orsino’s court. Antonio follows Sebastian, even though doing so puts him (Antonio) in grave danger as a wanted man.

Back on Olivia’s estate, Maria, Fabian, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew decide to play a trick on Malvolio by forging a love letter from Olivia. The letter asks Malvolio to display his love for her in ridiculous ways. Malvolio follows every instruction, with hilarious results.

Cesario arrives back at Olivia’s with more words of love from Orsino. Olivia shoos everyone away except Cesario, and she confesses her love for “him.” Viola gently rejects her offers.

Still believing Olivia wrote the love letter, Malvolio appears before Olivia, following every instruction in the letter. Olivia thinks Malvolio has gone mad, and she locks Malvolio in a tiny room.

Jealous of Cesario’s favor with Olivia, Sir Andrew follows Fabian and Toby’s recommendation to challenge Cesario to a duel. As they begin to fight. Antonio, who has been watching nearby, jumps in to save Cesario, mistaking him for Sebastian. As Antonio is being taken away, he calls out for Sebastian, giving Viola the hope that her brother is alive. In the final scenes of the play, the siblings are mistaken for each other several times before finally being united again. The pairs of lovers – Olivia and Sebastian, Viola and Orsino, and Toby and Maria – make decisions about their relationship, as the fates of Malvolio and Antonio remain uncertain.

Once considered divine siblings who share a bond deeper than that of ordinary beings, twins have been the subject of myths and legends for millennia. In Shakespeare’s world, twins were thought to be fundamentally the same. Identical twins could have the same face, and perhaps even voice, but what of fraternal twins or twins of different gender? Shakespeare himself was the father of fraternal twins, Hamnet and Judith. In Twelfth Night, as in many of his other works, Shakespeare likely integrated aspects of his life into his plays. Here, the story follows the fate of fraternal twins Viola and Sebastian. As we follow their stories, the twins are time and again seconds from crossing each other’s paths, yet fate keeps their stories parallel, never quite converging.

The earliest recorded performance of Twelfth Night is believed to have occurred at Middle Temple Hall on Candlemas night, February 2nd, 1602. John Manningham’s diary contains an entry detailing this first known performance, noting “At our feast we had a play called ‘Twelfth Night, or What You Will’, much like ‘The Comedy of Errors’ or ‘Menaechmi’ in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called ‘Inganni’.” Manningham mentions similarity to what is believed to be one of Shakespeare’s sources, the Italian play Gl’Ingannati, written and first performed in Siena in 1531 and printed in 1537. The story itself seemed popular enough and was frequently re-envisioned and thus became Shakespeare’s famous play, Twelfth Night.

Little written evidence exists of the early versions of Twelfth Night, or any possible alterations made between the first recorded performance and the first printed version of the text, which appears in the 1623 Folio. While some characters in Twelfth Night are similar to characters in stories existing in the Elizabethan era, it is thought that some characters were written with the intention of having a specific actor in the company to play that role. For example, it is thought that the role of Feste was first filled by Robert Armin, a court jester by trade.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s four comedies that involve a cross-dressing character and one of Shakespeare’s many stories of mistaken identity. In this case, our heroine Viola disguises herself as a young man. In the seventeenth century, Viola was typically played by a young boy who was trained to play a woman on the Elizabethan stage, which would have extended the gender play: a young boy, playing a woman, playing a boy. The show’s title, Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, refers to the Christian holiday known as the Epiphany, the twelfth night of Christmas, the night on which the three wise men arrived at the stable in Bethlehem. In the past, the holiday’s twelve days of celebration included having the traditional roles of the people reversed: Servants were waited on by their masters, men and women dressed as the opposite gender, and for twelve nights the world turned upside down.

Since Shakespeare’s time, the play has been performed around the world and set in wild and imaginative locations, such as the carnivalesque theme in the Guthrie Theater’s 1984 production and, currently, our own Edwardian Illyria. In 2006, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures released the popular film adaptation, She’s The Man, starring Amanda Bynes.

Our stage is set in the exotic seaside city of Illyria. Ruled by the benevolent Duke Orsino, the setting is reminiscent of the Edwardian era, a time spanning from 1901 until the beginning of WWI. The era contained similar class structures and styles to the imaginary setting of Illyria. Both settings demand a strictly structured social code and class system whose codes are reflected in their clothing and the costumes. Yet even within these social constraints, destiny has a way of stirring things up. While the noble class and the lower servant classes are clearly divided at the beginning of the play, those lines are soon blurred as love intervenes.

Role	Actor
Feste, an allowed fool	Thomas Anthony Quinn*
Musicians	Paul Henry, Ben Muller, Laura Bouxsein, Isaac Hickox-Young
Orsino, Duke of Illyria	Mark Tyler Miller
Curio, attendant to Orsino	Nathaniel Andalis
Valentine, attendant to Orsino	Carlos Medina Maldonado
Officers to Orsino	Forrest Loeffler, Robert Hunter Bry
Viola, later disguised as Cesario	Eliza Stoughton
A Sea Captain	Ben Muller
Sebastian, her twin brother	Christopher Peltier
Antonio, another sea-captain	Jonah D. Winston
Olivia, a Countess in Illyria	Deborah Staples*
Sir Toby Belch, her uncle	Mark Corkins*
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a suitor	Chris Amos*
Malvolio, Olivia's steward	Jonathan Gillard Daly*
Maria, her waiting-woman	Lori Adams
Fabian, a worker on Olivia's estate	Robert R. Doyle
Molly, an attendant to Olivia	Olivia Candocia
A Priest	Paul Henry
Sailors and Attendants	Alex Levy, Thomas Russell
Understudies
Viola	Eva Balistrieri
Olivia	Laura Bouxsein
Maria	Olivia Candocia
Feste/Curio	Isaac Hickox-Young
Sir Andrew/Sea Captain/Priest	Robert Hunter Bry
Sebastian/Valentine	Alex Levy
Orsino/Fabian	Forrest Loeffler
Sir Toby Belch	Carlos Medina Mendoza
Antonio	Thomas Russell

*denotes member of Actor's Equity Association

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