Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night

Brittany Bland-- Projection Designer

Zachry J. Bailey-- Assistant Stage Manager

Carl Cofield-- Director

Byron Easley-- Choreographer

Mika H. Eubanks-- Costume Designer

Molly Fitzmaurice-- Production Dramaturg

Abigail Gandy-- Stage Manager

Frederick Kennedy-- Composer and Sound Designer

Samuel Kwan Chi Chan-- Lighting Designer

David Phelps-- Technical Director

Riw Rakkulchon-- Scenic Designer

Cast

Abubakr Ali-- Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Erron Crawford-- Feste

William Demeritt-- Orsino

Allen Gilmore-- Malvolio

Tiffany Denise Hobbs-- Olivia

Moses Ingram-- Viola

Manu Kumasi-- Antonio

Chivas Michael-- Sir Toby

Ilia Isorelys Paulino-- Maria

Jakeem Dante Powell-- Sebastian

        Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, have been written around 1601-1602 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season.  The play tells the twins Viola and Sebastian are separated in a shipwreck and then Viola, who is disguised as Cesario, pretends to be a male, serving in the Duke Orsino's house and falling in love with him.  Duke Orsino is in love with Countess Olivia, but Olivia rejects his love.  Instead, Olivia loves Cesario (Viola).  Because of her gender and other reasons, Viola cannot respond to Olivia's love, but when Olivia engages with "Cesario" but actually her brother Sebastian, Sebastian accepts her engagement.  Sebastian comes to the town, finds his sister, and clears up the misunderstanding.  In the end, Orsino and Viola are together, and Viola and Sebastian are coupling.

        The comedy cannot be thought deeply.  I think if you really look into the story, the ending is a little bit suspicious.  Olivia loves "Cesario" but then when she realizes that Cesario is a girl, and instead, Viola and Sebastian are twins, she accepts Sebastian immediately.  Therefore, I highly doubt that Olivia and Sebastian will have a happy couple life when the days go by.  Neither do Orsino and Viola.  Viola falls in love with Orsino a long time ago, but Orsino loves Olivia.  Even though I can see that sometimes he is hesitating about the emotion and feeling that he has to "Cesario", he keeps chasing Olivia.  Moreover, the end is rushed.  The story of Malvolio and the story of Antonio are not complete.  Therefore, it is entertaining, and we do not have to think too much.

          I love the show because of its setting and acting.  For the setting, the light projection is the surprisingly successful one.  At the beginning of the show, Orsino is standing on the stage with visual reality device on.  He said, "If music be the food of love, play on," and the lighting projected on the screen with different colored smoke and some women' heads circulated like a kaleidoscope.  The density of the projecting light can decide whether you can look through the screen, which means that the screen itself is like yarn or thin fabric, but the light can be density enough to make the screen seems as heavy as a curtain.  The delusion that the stage made at the beginning really got me.  With the words, music, and the vision on the screen, I could feel the absurdity of love.  The colorful smokes were expanding to the edge of the screen from one point and the colors were mixed together.  The smoke, the fog disguised your vision first, but when they were cleared, you saw the exaggeration of women' faces and bodies with a sex implication in it.  The line, "If music be the food of love, play on," shows a strong desire of Orsino of controlling love.  He wanted to control the love in the heavy fogs and delusion, which is hardly achieved.  Therefore, I think his action is absurd, and his attitude toward love is arrogant, complicated, and irrelevant.
        The costumes are lovely.  Inspired by Black Panther, the costumes mixed traditional African culture with new fashion.  For example, Viola and Sebastian wear long greenish rob inside and have blazer outside.  They look exotic firstly, but as the play goes on, I found it I love their costumes.  I would love to wear my blazer like that.  Compare to Viola's blazer, Olivia's two costumes are gorgeous and beautiful.  Maybe because of her first appearance in the red light surprised me, her costumes and herself leaves me an impression of elegance and silent pomp.  Sir Aguecheek's costume might be in a French style, and Feste's costume is hip-hop.  The costumes revealed the personalities of character really well, and I love all the costumes they designed.