Metaverse Shakespeare Company’s 2010 Main Canon: Twelfth Night, Act 3 – Preview Season

Continuing with the third installment of an epic 2009-2011 opus, the Metaverse Shakespeare Company on Tuesday will open Act 3 of an unabridged full-ensemble performance of Twelfth Night in a short-run Winter Preview Season to occur at the SL Globe Theatre on Tuesdays at 6 PM SLT and Sundays at 1 PM SLT between December 7 and December 21.

A shortage of male actors has forced the troupe into a virtual avant-garde production with artistic director stepping in to play a “malefaced” Malvolio, “There’s been a strange malady affecting the MSC – it’s a sweeping rampage of virtual male baldness: we seem to be losing the avails of all our male actors… Pulling a maleface wouldn’t be my first choice, but this would also be an interesting setup for how future all-female shows might involve some distinctly male voices, as well. There are other nuances of interpretations that an all-female production connotes – the usage of a voice morpher lets any girl play a guy without forcing the all-female classification on the show. It’s the secret dream of the cross-dressing Shakespearean actress’, near-true gender liberation!”

A founding tradition of the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (formerly SL Shakespeare) is that a new virtual theatrical stagecraft technology is presented in each new production. Artistic Director Ina Centaur explains the SL Stagecraft innovation for this production, “We’ve designed a locally-rotating set that conveys a sort of visual scenic unity in the multi-moded Scene 4 of Act 3 – the multi-level design features both an interior side and an exterior side, complete with Illyrian-Venetian canals with live gondola action! This being a virtual world, audience members can sit back and enjoy the show or actively camera-zoom to self-discover the ‘back’ of the set, before it turns around, and vice versa!”

Dates for the 5-run Preview Season show are Tuesdays @ 6 PM, Sundays @ 1PM, 12/7 @ 6 PM, 12/12 @ 1 PM, 12/14 @ 6 PM, 12/19 @ 1 PM, and 12/21 @ 6PM.

About Twelfth Night, Act 3
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 3 deepens and shows the outcome of certain plotted complications. We see Olivia in the ecstasy of love with Cesario; Cesario getting into some trouble with a potential duel with Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Malvolio, having fully fallen into Maria’s trap — prancing around blowing kisses away betraying his epic class-ascending hubris.

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.