This is Part C of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

After Feste leaves, Toby asserts his righteousness, then tells Malvolio to busywork himself by polishing his chain with crumbs. This time, he asks Maria for wine, not Marian:

Toby: Th’art i’th right. Go sir, rub your Chain with crumbs. A stoop of wine, Maria.

Malvolio attempts to beseech Maria, wrongly believing her to be an ally. Except, Maria entertains Toby’s wish, giving him more wine, and thus Malvolio gives his threat.

Malvolio: Mistress Mary, if you priz’d my Lady’s favor at anything more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule. She shall know of it by this hand.

Malvolio exits via a quick door. Maria, quite shaken up by his threat, replies with fury:

Maria: Go shake your ears!

This is Part B of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

Maria enters in the middle of Scene 3, after the festive trio have been making some noise via songs and such.

Maria: What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my Lady have not call’d up her Steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.

Toby replies partly in prose, partly in song:

Toby: My Lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three Merry men be we. Am not I consanguinious? Am I not of her blood: tilly vally. Lady, There dwelt a man in Babylon, Lady, Lady.

Toby’s reply might be taken to be a punny though drunken “tilly vally” (”fiddlesticks” nonsensical) retort, where, he “reasons” if he’s a “Caterwaulian,” his “consanguinious” (blood-related) cousin must be a “Cataian”. If the three must be quiet, then they might as well be plotting politicians, and if Malvolio’s the person who’d tell them off, then he’s the Peg-a-Ramsey spy… And the festive trio converge to just one person, and thus there’s just three parties–the Cataian Lady, the politician, and the Peg-a-Ramsey.

Crystal Shakespeare interprets Toby’s reply to have some “sense” to it: Cataian - a scoundrel or spy from the Cathays (an area, “roughly” known as China), politicians (players of intrigue), and Peg-a-ramsey (song samples: here and here), referring to the ballad of a spying wife. On giving a geographic interpretation to Cathays — incidentally, this article by Y.Z. Chang has more info on the Elizabethans’ perception of the Cataian or Cathayans (Incidentally, it was published in 1936, a year before the Nanjing Massacre).

Both Arden and the Variorum suggest using the tune of Greensleeves for “There dwelt a man in Babylon…” — for comic effect (and, since we’re not doing a period production, per se), perhaps have a bit of a “Broadway ring” in the ending, “Lady, Lady.”

Toby’s drunken imagination seems to be irking Feste, “beshrewing him,” in that Toby seems a better fool than he, now.

Feste: Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.

Andrew, being Andrew, seems eager to claim credit for fool:

Andrew: Aye, he do’s well enough if he be dispos’d, and so do I too: he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

Toby bursts into anthem:

Toby: O the twelfth day of December.

Maria’s like, “Oh for the love of god, SHUT UP!”

Maria: For the love o’God, peace.

And then Malvolio enters. Traditionally, he’s dressed in PJ’s, perhaps even with a nightcap. A Steward’s traditional role is to keep order in the house, so, in a way, he’s just doing his duty, but he’s Malvolio, and there’s plenty of repressed angst he’s just got to let out:

Malvolio: My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like Tinkers at this time of night?

At this point, Toby throws the apple at Malvolio, who ducks and continues dissing them:

Malvolio: Do ye make an Alehouse of my Lady’s house, that ye squeak out your Coziers’ Catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

Toby knows that the trio hasn’t been exactly in-tune or even singing anything worth a sixpence, but, at least they kept in time. He hiccups and sneezes, in time, too!:

Toby:
We did keep time, sir, in our Catches.
(He hiccups and sneezes)
Sneck up!

Malvolio first tries to reason with Toby, in his own way, saying that Toby-sans-clamor is welcome, but the current Toby, however, must be “separated from misdemeanors”:

Malvolio: Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My Lady bade me tell you, that though she harbors you as her kinsman, she’s nothing ally’d to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house: if not, an’ it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.

Toby, ever the self-asserting individualist, even when drunk, declares (in song!):

Toby: Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone. (Hiccup!)

Toby and Feste continue to banter in song, “singing about Malvolio behind his back.” Maria doesn’t join their singsong, nor does Malvolio, who takes their song-lyrics literally.

Maria: Nay, good Sir Toby.
Feste: His eyes do shew his days are almost done.
Malvolio: Is’t even so?
Toby: But I will never die.
Feste: Sir Toby there you lie.
Malvolio: This is much credit to you.
Toby: Shall I bid him go.
Feste: What and if you do?
Toby: Shall I bid him go, and spare not?
Feste: O no, no, no, no, you dare not.

On Feste’s support, Toby starts railing about Malvolio’s presumed “holier-than-thou” attitude:

Toby: Out o’tune, sir, ye lie: art any more than a Stewart? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?

Feste, makes his leave, perhaps delivering his line with a wishy-washy commitment:

Feste: Yes, by Saint Anne, and Ginger shall be hot i’the mouth too.

This is Part A of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

The Fun Scene… with Song!

Toby opens this scene, by goading a likely-tired Andrew to “stay awake” via a perversion of proverb “early to rise…”, though in Latin. For comic effect, he might as well pronounce “deliculo surgere” as “deli - qu - lo  cigar - ray!”:

Toby: Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be a bedded after midnight is to be up betimes, and Deliculo surgere, thou know’st!

Andrew’s drunk-as-heck, so he’s just like, “By my guts, all I know is that, to be up late, is to be up late.”

Andrew: Nay by my troth I know not: but I know, to be up late, is to be up late

In this case, Sir Toby Belch lets go the other bodily function, he whizzes into an empty milk can, the first (yellow-tinted) “milk of the day”:

Toby: A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfill’d can.

It’s a long piss, so he continues philosophizing while whizzing:

Toby: To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then is early: so that to go to bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes.

Toby zips up his fly:

Toby: Does not our lives consist of the four Elements?

Andrew is a rather down-to-earth-man (read: ok, so, he’s more than a tad uncultured):

Andrew: Faith so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

More booze is always good for Toby (he’s just pissed it all off, anyway):

Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say, a stoop of wine.

It’s curious that, in context, Maria does not enter the scene until much later (when she complains about the noise), and yet–all of a sudden–Toby mentions a name that seems similar to her name, but does not actually refer to Maria. “Marian”, in my interpretation, refers to the painting of the Virgin Mary (with wine!) that hangs in Olivia’s pantry (Both paintings by Joos van Cleve: Candidate 1 [info] [pic] | Candidate 2 [info] [pic]), wherein Toby makes an obscure reference to the Marian Dogma, which might be fitting for a performance of Twelfth Night at the Blackfriars (considering its Dominican roots).

Feste enters with a bottle of wine, and gathers the trio together in a lovely picturesque moment in front of this painting of the Virgin Mary with wine:

Feste: How now, my harts — did you never see the Picture of we three?

Toby asks for both song and wine “in a catch” from Feste:

Toby: Welcome ass, now let’s have a catch.

Andrew then commends Feste for his voice (”excellent breast”), but since he’s drunk-off-his-ass, he might as well also be staring at Feste’s breast while thinking of the graceful foolery with dance and song last night, and the sixpence to Feste’s “Leman” (lover).

Andrew: By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou was in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the Equinoxial of Queubus: ’twas very good i’faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy Leman, hadst it?

Feste tells Andrew that he has indeed pocketed Andrew’s gratuity, but he says it with a sort of “ring” or a “trill” to his voice, “gratillllllity,” and perhaps says the rest of his line with rap-like rhythm, explaining that Malvolio’s nose couldn’t catch him in giving it to his lady, who appeared too innocent, and the hired killers (Mermidons) weren’t home, anyway, to fix up the matter.

Feste: I did impeticos thy gratillity: for Malvolio’s nose is no whip-stock, my Lady has a white hand, and the Mermidons are no bottle-ale houses.

Andrew’s again delighted by Feste’s nonsense.

Andrew: Excellent: why this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song.

Toby sees through Feste’s hardship, and offers him a sixpence for himself:

Toby: Come on, there is sixpence for you. let’s have a song.
Andrew: There’s a testril of me too: if one knight give a –

Feste bows, in character, and takes on his street-entertainer persona, offering a choice of songs:

Feste: Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

Toby: A love song, a love song.
Andrew: Aye, aye. I care not for good life.

Feste sings his ditty*:

Feste:
O Mistress mine where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

I’m going to post my own sheet music for the songs that the actor and I figure out for these singing parts, but meanwhile, Duffin’s Shakespeare Songbook has a series of samples available online that can help cue you in on-tune.

Toby and Andrew then both clamor for “Encore!”, and Feste continues singing:

Feste:
What is love, ’tis not hereafter,
Present mirth, hath present laughter:
What’s to come, is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me sweet and twenty:
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

At this point, Andrew is so drunk that he gives his last retort in a declare of a shout, and then falls down, on the floor, drunk:

Andrew: A mellifluous voice, as I AM TRUE KNIGHT!

Contagious referring to the contagion of not just music and singsong, but also that of drink:

Toby: A contagious breath.

Andrew: Very sweet, and contagious i’faith.

Toby then rouses them all to action, goading them on to “make the sky shake (make the Welkin dance)”, and awake even the “Nightowl in a Catch”

Toby: To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the Welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the Nightowl in a Catch, that will draw three fouls out of one Weaver? Shall we do that?

As described in more detail in our OEP2 playscript (pdf | celtx), I’ve gone a bit far and literal, to actually have Toby throw around an apple, in a game of moral catch, where both Toby and Feste betray a bit of their cruelness to be fully revealed in later acts, when they play around with poor Andrew as dog. Toby throws the apple to Feste (who misses and curses “Bloody, sir, and some dogs will catch well!”), while Andrew crawls on all four (drunk), trying to get at the “ball”:

Andrew: And you love me, let’s do’t. I am dogged at a Catch

Feste: By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

Andrew catches the ball, drops it in front of Feste, sings “Thou Knave”:

Andrew: Most certain: let our Catch be, Thou Knave.

Feste then takes the apple, and, in mockery, knights Andrew with an apple balanced on the knighting-sword:

Feste: Hold thy peace, thou Knave knight. I shall be constrain’d in’t, to call thee knave, Knight.

Andrew rises:

Andrew: ‘Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave. Begin fool: it begins, “Hold thy peace.”

Feste: I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

Andrew: Good i’faith: come, begin.

And Maria enters, monetarily pausing the caterwauling…

This scene conveys Viola’s famous “ring speech.”

It’s amazing how peevish (rude!) both parties are in their initial exchange! Though Olivia’s endowed with a significant estate, I’ve set this scene in Olivia’s Garden, such that Malvolio’s opening line might not just be the formal statement of a neutral servant, but contains subtext of a disregard, “Do I know you? You were with the Countess Olivia, right?”:

Malvolio: Were you not e’en now, with the Countesse Olivia?

Viola’s reply is basically, “Yeah, duh, even walking at regular speed, I’ve only walked so far. (Whom else could I be?)”:

Viola: Even now, sir, on a moderate pace, I have since arriv’d but hither.

Malvolio wishes simply to be done with this matter, to brush off this churlish messenger with a ring:

Malvolio: She returns this Ring to you (sir).

But, perhaps the endorphins released from the action of thrusting the ring at her, gets his galls up, to the essential Malvolio:

Malvolio: You might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself.

Malvolio regains his composure, and attempts at the professional aloofness, again, though it seems that he’s brimming with relish in stating Olivia’s condition, “unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this.”

Malvolio: She adds, moreover, that you should put your Lord into a desperate assurance; she will none of him. And one thing more, that you be never so hardly to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

Malvolio has been holding his hand out, with the unaccepted ring the whole time. Viola hasn’t accepted yet. He commands her, to “Receive it so,” (”take the ring, you rascal!”), but Viola smartly replies, keeping Olivia’s secret, and expressing the rudeness in Olivia’s fickle decision in first taking, then returning:

Viola: She took the Ring of me; I’ll none of it.

Malvolio gives his commentary (”Seriously, kiddo, you rudely threw it at her.”), and then attempts the professional servant’s aloofness (”Her will is that you take it back.”):

Malvolio: Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so return’d.

Malvolio throws the ring to the ground, the two make eyecontact on the ring. Malvolio is obviously a servant too lofty to wish to pocket ring change, so, knowing that this peevish messenger might not even pick it up, he just haughtily throws it away, this prize of a ring:

Malvolio: If it be worth stooping for, there it lies, in your eye: if not, be it his that finds it.

After Malvolio leaves, Viola is alone onstage, delivering a soliloquy at a point in the story, where her character feels lonely, as well–no one really knows who she really is. She begins by wondering about the ring she never gave to Olivia, and in fact, the entire speech is a meditation on interpretive implications from the ring:

Viola: I left no Ring with her: what means this Lady?

Viola then cites the only logical explanation for the hackneyed “love at first sight”–indeed, the two had barely met, so it could only be her looks that have done this.

Viola:
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her:
She made good view of me, indeed so much,
That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.

Although she first thinks that Olivia is simply secretly giving her a token of her fondness for him, she begins to consider that Olivia might actually love her–the mere fact that Olivia’d invited her in, and her rudeness, too. And, why did she refer to the ring as her Lord’s ring?:

Viola: She loves me sure, the cunning of her passion
Invites me in, this churlish messenger:
None of my Lord’s Ring? Why he sent her none.

Epiphany–Olivia loves Cesario!:

Viola: I am the man, if it be so, as t’is,
Poor Lady, she were better love a dream!

It’s true, Olivia can only have Cesario, “in her dreams!”. “And, it’s all due to this disguise, and wow, we have yet a potential enemy due to it, this whole same-gender relationship mess. Ack!”

Viola:
Disguise, I feel thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

Why is it that women so often fall for Mr. Wrong (in this case… Ms. Wrong!):

Viola:
How easy it is, for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms:

For the next, I’ve gone along with the line, as printed, from the folio, where Viola cites frailty (tendency to be soft-hearted, too-trusting thus too-quick to fall-in-love) as the cause, not women, per se–and if they’re frail, it’s because they’re made with frailty:

Viola:
Alas, O frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made, if such we be!

Viola then states the crux of the problem, this love triangle created by herself as this gender-disguised “poor monster”, and Olivia “mistaken”, and her master. Even if she were a real boy, the real Cesario, she would still be bound as Orsino’s servant, required to do his bidding, to woo Olivia on his behalf. But, as a woman, as she really is, she’d only cause Olivia heartbreak:

Viola:
How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,
And I (poor monster) fond as much on him:
And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me:
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love:
As I am woman (now alas the day)
What thriftless sighs shall poor Oliv’a breathe?

This entire episode is done while Viola ponders, standing, meditating/staring at the ring, figuring out what to do with it. She then bends down, picks up the ring, decides to let fate be her arbiter:

Viola:
O time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.

Twelfth Night might be most easily summed up by the defining topsy-turviness present in its subtitle of “what you will,” but, when all’s settled in the end, it is a play whose denouement prevents the consummation of two same-gender relationships (”limiting” a sort of “what you will” that the times had not-just-yet been ready for)–the one that might have blossomed had Viola not heeded the Captain’s advice (I.ii) and became Olivia’s servant (Olivia could so *totally* be dominatrix), and had Sebastian not been taken by wanderlust to venture into Illyria (II.i), and stayed longer in recompense to Antonio.

When I first read Act 2, Scene 1, I’d taken the relationship between Antonio and Sebastian to be compassionate rather than impassioned (the “orthodox” relationship), but after reading Taylor’s commentary (p 78ff), I feel as if I’m seeing the entire play from a different “worldview”. Previously, I would have cast the same actress for Viola as for Sebastian, but it seems that I’d miss a huge dimension of the play if Antonio and Sebastian weren’t the same gender.

A & S - in a masochistic relationship

It seems that the Antonio and Sebastian relationship can be seen as a sort of mutual masochism, where Antonio loves the torture that comes from loving Sebastian, and Sebastian does what he does not to escape Antonio’s love, but, subconsciously, to give Antonio recompense.

The scene opens, in medias res, with Antonio stating the problem, whose outcome will be determined by the scene’s denouement:

Antonio: Will you stay no longer? Nor will you not that I go with you.

The point is not only that Sebastian is leaving, but that Sebastian desires to leave Antonio.
Sebastian’s explanation for his leave is ominous, claiming that he does not want to share his bad luck, and that it would only be bad re-payment, that he’d rather go off on his own to brood over his evils alone:

Sebastian: By your patience, no: my stars shine darkly over me; the malignancies of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore, I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you.

But, on closer inspection, it seems as if he’s giving an implicit suicide threat, inferring at the “malignancies of [his] fate [evils which he wishes to] bear… alone.”

Antonio’s reply shows concern, that this youth might not know what he’s saying–does he even know where he’s going?:

Antonio: Let me know of you–whither you are bound?

Or, perhaps this might be a desperate grasp at knowing, at least, where his dear Sebastian would go, “Where will you go; will you be all right? (Are you sure of it?).” Sebastian’s reply, “Honestly, I’m just going to wander around like a vagabond.”, can be taken as a retort of depressed gloominess (he’s just lost his sister, the remainder of his family, what else has he to go for):

Sebastian: No, sooth, sir — my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy…

Or, on closer inspection, it seems as if Sebastian’s line is carefully calculated to challenge Antonio–even as he’s complimenting Antonio’s good-natured politeness “so excellent a touch of modesty”, he seems to poke fun at Antonio’s concern, rendering that as his wish to “extort from [him] what [he is] willing to keep in”:

Sebastian: But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me, what I am willing to keep in; therefore, it charges me in manners, the rather to express myself.

Sebastian only decides to tell Antonio his backstory to emphasize the latent suicide threat in his wish expressed earlier of, “[bearing his] evils alone.”

Sebastian: You must know of me then Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Rodorigo. My father was that Sebastian of Messaline, whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him, myself and a sister, both born in an hour: if the Heavens had been pleas’d, would we had so ended.

But, it’s his next line that betrays his subconscious scorn for Antonio’s action:

Sebastian: But you, sir, altered that, for some hours before you took me from the breach of the sea, was my sister drown’d.

Antonio’s response, in a conventional interpretation, where the two’s conversation is merely amicable, might be filled with horror. But, in this current “mutual masochism” interpretation, Antonio responds with a joy his words barely suppress, as he embraces Sebastian from behind (”Score! Sebastian is all alone in the world, were it not for me! We two, ta la la!”):

Antonio: Alas, the day!

It’s curious that Sebastian would next start describing his sister. In the standard interpretation, this could just be Sebastian continuing to tell his story, but in this same-gender relationship, it’s almost as if he is likening himself to his twin, becoming the more feminine couple, with a trace of mea-culpa-ism denying his own twin-beauty:

Sebastian: A Lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful.

Sebastian sounds like a sibling, as he comments that he doesn’t really believe that his sister was that beautiful, but, at least he can attest to her smarts:

Sebastian: But though I could not with estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish her: she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair.

And, apparently, that’s all of an eulogy Viola gets from him, as Sebastian closes with her fate, and his tearful reaction:

Sebastian: She is drown’d already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

Antonio’s response is one of those famous lines, but, in this masochistic interpretation, at least, what he’s really saying is that, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a better host for you, not enough  for you to forget about the pains in your backstory, and to have you desire to stay longer with me”:

Antonio: Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.

Sebastian replies with like subtext, “You couldn’t have made me want to stay with you anyway. Forgive me.”:

Sebastian: O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

Antonio replies with all abandon (subtext: “Oh, I don’t care! I love you, don’t kill me, use me, let me serve you.”):

Antonio: If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.

Sebastian knows that Antonio desires this intense companionship from him, and though he, himself, might even crave that, he knows that Antonio wants him to spurn him, that he desires this rejection, this holy grail of unrequited:

Sebastian: If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not.

He leaves Antonio in tears, and perhaps even with some affinity for Antonio (regretting that he’d have to leave Antonio to please his masochistic tendencies), but tragic understanding that nothing would give Antonio greater pleasure than this pivotal unrequitedness:

Sebastian: Fare ye well at once, my bosom is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more, mine eyes will tell tales of me: I am bound to the Count Orsino’s Court, farewell.

Delivering the scene’s ending soliloquy in a fleeting whisper, Antonio expresses his poetic justification for risking his life:

Antonio:
The gentleness of all the gods go with thee.
I have many enemies in Orsino’s Court,
Else would I very shortly see thee there.
But come what may, I do adore thee so,
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.

A & S - in a “normal” relationship

Taking the above, assuming just a friendly relationship among the two, Sebastian can be seen as delivering all his lines simply as partly words to the man who saved his life, with kind thankfulness, and truthfulness. This “orthodox” interpretation is really straight-forward and no fun at all.

This neutral “orthodox professional no drama” interpretation in the “normal” relationship seems to be due to social upbringing, but what really changed my paradigm about this play was how it seems that all of the Olivia/Viola lines could be read as the words exchanged by a pair of potential lesbian lovers,  and that the Antonio/Sebastian relationship is almost an echo of that sort of topsy-turvy of same-gender marriages that would surely boggle the Elizabethan mind.

Twelfth Night, Act 2 is finally in the works… and a draft of the working playscript containing stage directions is available here: (celtx | pdf | txt)

A “MiniPrompt Sheet” that summarizes sets, props, special effects and more is here.

Scheduling is still TBD… (alas, the complications of working with an international cast with everyone in their own countries!)

Continuing our tradition of introducing a new technological innovation with each show — we will showcase physically accurate effects onstage… such as whizzing urine a la Sir Toby Belch; a grandiose shadow AO - befitting a self-smitten Malvolio; and the classic apple physics, but with a bout of booze, a broadsword and a bit of bondage…  That and more, all revealed in the playscript above!

We also hope to test out Aussie timing — tentatively 10 PM SLT. Aussies, is that a good time?

Also… We are rebranding! Name to be revealed soon. Stay tuned!

The year’s second open auditions will be held on Saturday, April 18 @ 11 AM - 11:59 AM SL Time and Saturday, April 25 @ 1 PM SL Time. We are hoping to launch an open-ended run of Twelfth Night: Act 2 (Production Serial: OEP2) in June, with rehearsals starting in May, exact timing TBD. Auditions would be for roles in this upcoming production, and also several possible productions, including a Challenge Production (a non-Shakespearean production) and Twelfth Night: Act 3. Please be sure you have SL voice configured prior to auditioning.

1. Please have prepared a passage (from Twelfth Night, Act 2) of no more than 5 minutes. Polish it well; this should demonstrate what you are capable of at your best.
2. Be ready to perform another segment from the perspective of the character you wish to play (though you might not get casted as that character).
3. Be prepared to demonstrate (voice) range.

If you can’t make it to the audition times, please email item #1 as an mp3 file (no larger than 10 mb) to production at SLshakespeare dot com, along with a detailed schedule of your availability from May to August, inclusive.

Auditions will be held at the SL Globe Theatre.