Metaverse Shakespeare Company’s 2010 Main Canon: Twelfth Night, Act 2 – Preview Season

Shakespeare, Second Life—March 2, 2010—The Metaverse Shakespeare Company (MSC), formerly SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC), today opens its Preview Season, exclusively to the MSC inworld group and affiliates. The repertoire features its 2010 Main Canon production of Twelfth Night, Act 2 in an open-ended run to occur every Tuesday at 6 PM SLT, and every Sunday at 1 PM SLT. Set to occur at the 4-sim SL Globe Theatre, the performance continues the troupe’s 2009 production of Twelfth Night, Act 1—but, with a fresher, riper take, and its own amalgam of the year’s innovations in virtual theatre.

This Open-Ended run of Twelfth Night, Act 2, like Act 1, is based on archetypes, grounded in the play’s intrinsic elements, such as character relationships, set in a world that is pre-modernity, and yet, says Artistic Director Ina Centaur, the topsy-turvy nature of the play and the era of its creation comes through, “Even though this production is set in the ‘generic past’, there’s still plenty of Elizabethan notions and bawdry… There’s the presentation of class-crossing as a ridicule-prone absurdity and the visual portrayal of that heavily-cozy-explicit language—with a wild bit where a drunk-betimes Sir Toby Belch urinates live on-stage to “[fill] an unfill’d can (II.iii).” Says Centaur on the music of Twelfth Night and the spirit of the open-ended run, “I’ve composed my own little tune for Feste’s Song to Orsino in Scene 4, which will actually only be sung in select shows—but you can find its sheet music on the mShakespeare blog… For most shows, we’re sticking with an orthodox interpretation and traditional songs, drawn from the era before and Shakespeare’s contemporaries. But, this being an open-ended run, be braced for variations, and character metamorphosis—in both act and appearance.”

While this will be the troupe’s first production under its new name of Metaverse Shakespeare Company, Centaur asserts that the production continues to uphold the company’s founding ideals in developing this nascent field of virtual theatre, “As with every Main Canon production, we apply new technologies to virtual theatre. For Twelfth Night, Act 2, our three technological innovations include the usage of physics, moving automatons, and visual illusion on the virtual stage. You’ll see physics on-stage, in both built-in and scripted forms in our apple catches in Scene 3, and wilting rose motif in Scene 4—and, in the crawlspace of Scene 3, you’d see prim-based automaton actors in the form of rats!”

Special to this production, the MSC introduces the concept of “crowdsourced interactive set design,” which allows anyone to submit a graffiti message or poster/flyer idea to be plastered onto the “City Wall of Illyria” set in Act 2, Scene 1. More details at http://bit.ly/illyriangraffiti

The live show, presented via SL Voice, is also available in closed-captioning with opera-style subtitles in English, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.

Starting March 2, shows occur
Tuesdays at 6PM SLT (PT)
Sundays at 1 PM SLT (PT)
only at the SL Globe Theatre at Shakespeare (255,255,25)

About Twelfth Night, Act 2
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a multiplot story with plentiful songs and bawdry topsy-turviness. On one hand it’s the story of a shipwrecked girl named Viola, whose choice to go incognito as a boy eunuch results in myriad complications—including a gender-bending love triangle. On another, it chronicles the fallacious rise and tragic fall of a Puritanical steward named Malvolio, who becomes a victim of his too-lofty dream. Act 2 sets the basics for his downfall—his dysfunctional relationship with the other servants provokes a practical joke involving a certain forged letter, that would eventually ruin him.

About the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (mShakespeare)
Headquartered in the virtual world of Second Life (SL), the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (MSC) is the flagship project of sLiterary’s Virtual Reality Shakespeare Initiative (VRSI). MSC is a professional virtual theatre company that embraces the best of what the metaverse has to offer. While it is primarily known to provide quality live Shakespearean theatre available to anyone in any location, MSC is also the curator of the most historically accurate theatres and architecture in virtual worlds relating to William Shakespeare.

Website: http://mshakespeare.com
Press Center: http://mshakespeare.com/press
Blog: http://blog.mshakespeare.com
Playbills: http://playbills.mshakespeare.com
Programmes: http://programmes.mshakespeare.com

About sLiterary
sLiterary, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering literary and artistic endeavors in Second Life and other virtual worlds.

About Second Life
Second Life is a free online virtual world imagined and created by its residents.

Neither the SL Shakespeare Company nor sLiterary is affiliated with Linden Lab. Second Life is a trademark of Linden Lab. No infringement is intended.