The Conservatory at Shakespeare & Company presents Twelfth Night
LENOX, Mass. — Shakespeare & Company presents two special performances of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s mad-cap’d story of lovers, pirates, and fools, for its culminating performance of the second year of its Conservatory at Shakespeare & Company program. Shows are Friday, December 12 and Saturday, December 13 at Shakespeare & Company’s new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on its 70 Kemble Street campus in Lenox.Both performances are at 7 p.m. and tickets are $12. Tickets are available in advance from the Box Office (413-637-3353) and online at www.shakespeare.org. This year’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare participants will be admitted FREE by showing their 2008 Festival Pass. The Saturday performance is preceded by a special Twelfth Night Warm-Up, a festive Yuletide get-together with an Elizabethan flavor, featuring “Twelfth Night” wine punch, holiday sweets and tasty tidbits. Tickets for Twelfth Night Warm-Up are $12 and available from the Box Office.
Twelfth Night is directed by longtime S&Co. artist and Training Program faculty member Marc Scipione, and it will be the first Shakespeare play performed in the new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. Led by senior S&Co artists and teachers under the direction of Associate Director of Training Dave Demke, The Conservatory at Shakespeare & Company has provided professional training over the last three months through daily classes in the Company’s acting techniques. The course progression includes Structure of the Verse, Shakespeare Scholarship, First Folio, Art of Rhetoric, Personal Connection, Linklater Voice Technique, Clown, Neutral Mask, Fight, Movement and Elizabethan Dance. The 11-member cast will bring to the stage everything that they have learned during the past three months of their intense training, with most actors performing multiple roles in one of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies.
Actors interested in the 2010 Conservatory are invited to attend Twelfth Night and meet with current and former students and faculty. For information on the 2010 Conservatory or any other Training program, contact Training Programs Associate Scott Renzoni at (413) 637-1199 x114 or training@shakespeare.org. Faculty members of this year’s Conservatory are Angela Bonacasa, Merry Conway, Dave Demke, Dennis Krausnick, Corinna May, Tod Randolph, Marc Scipione, Michael F. Toomey, and Kristin Wold.
"Twelfth Night may be Shakespeare's most romantic and insightful comedy," says Demke. "Like all his comedies it is filled with wit, revelry, joy, and bawdiness. But juxtaposing the comedy are deep strains of loss, loneliness, madness, and despair. The world of Illyria is a heightened, chaotic place, seemingly free from time and normal responsibility. Through Viola's and Sebastian's courage and passion, this strange world and its inhabitants are thrust into a state of transformation where the party ends and chaos turns to order. The play leaps into action from a profound experience of sadness, and moves inexorably to a conclusion of sobering and joyful epiphanies."
Written in 1604, Twelfth Night unfolds in Illyria, a land of obsession, lusty clowns, and mistaken identity. The play opens with the love-sick Duke Orsino pining away for his object of desire, the unattainable Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, a shipwreck that separates a twin brother and sister (Viola and Sebastian) delivers young Viola onto Illyria’s shores. Thinking her brother dead and seeking employment with Orsino, Viola disguises herself as a man (Cesario) and promptly becomes Orsino’s servant. The only part she had not planned on was her falling passionately in love with him.
Orsino sends Cesario to woo Olivia, who, upon hearing this new messenger speak, falls in love with her/him instead of Orsino. During this time, Sebastian, who was thought dead, arrives on the scene followed by his trusty friend Antonia, a sea-captain who rescued him. Mayhem ensues when Sebastian is mistaken by Olivia for Cesario, Cesario is mistaken by Antonia as Sebastian, and Sebastian is mistaken by Sir Toby and his fops for Cesario. Not to be out-plotted, Olivia’s overbearing and puritanical steward, Malvolio, who is also in love with her, has been humiliated and imprisoned by a trick played by Olivia’s scheming gentlewoman, Maria, and her kinsman Sir Toby Belch and Feste the clown. The moment of startling revelation erupts when all the lovers find themselves gathered at the same roller-coaster on the fairgrounds, prompting celebration and marriage to break out on the topsy-turvy island of Illyria.
The talented cast features Robyn Arrington,Vanessa Bellew, Rose Ehlinger,Autumn Elise Henry,Emily Karol, Andy Markert, Sophie Netanel, Michael Judson Pace, Erin Elizabeth Peck, Danielle RoseValleyand Angela Sommerfeld. Text Coaches are Dave Demke, Dennis Krausnick, and Michael F. Toomey. Costume Design is by Jim Day. Lighting Design is by Michael F. Toomey and Marc Scipione. Sound Design is by Michael Pfieffer.
Shakespeare & Company aspires to create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the classical ideals of inquiry, balance, and harmony. Founded in 1978 by Tina Packer, its current Artistic Director and with a core of over 150 artists, the Company performs Shakespeare, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors, and designers of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds. Shakespeare & Company provides original, in-depth, classical training and performance methods. The Company also develops and produces new plays of social and political significance. Shakespeare & Company’s nationally-recognized education programs have received numerous awards including the prestigious 2006 Coming Up Taller Award presented by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in January of last year, and in 2005 it also received the Commonwealth Award, the highest award for excellence in the arts, sciences and humanities given by the state of Massachusetts. The Education Program reaches nearly 50,000 students annually and was also the subject of an in-depth, two-year study by Harvard University’s Project Zero which recommended national replication. Shakespeare & Company offers one of the most unique and extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country. Theatre students and professionals from all over the world come to train with the Company, participating in Weekend and Month-Long Intensives, the Spring Intensive, Text and Clown Workshops, and other special offerings. Past training participants include Lauren Ambrose, Karen Allen, Gillian Barge, Jennifer Grant, Karen Grassle, Joe Morton, Andie MacDowell, Bronson Pinchot, Anna Deavere Smith, Keanu Reeves, Diana Quick, Courtney Vance, Sigourney Weaver.
