William Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' is to be performed as a 'A Night At The Theatre' production between the Redland Performing Arts Centre, and the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble.
The comedic story of love, deception, and social relations will be showcased under the stars, at the Roma Street Parklands and RPAC for an audience of picnic-goers and camping-chair enthusiasts.
Rob Pensalfini, the director of the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble, is looking forward to bringing the play to life.
What is it about Shakespeare that has people coming back for more, time and time again?
The language. The wealth of insights into what motivates our behaviour and how we justify it, and his ability to see every side of any issue. Shakespeare doesn’t tell you what to think about anything – you can study his plays for several lifetimes and still have no idea what the author himself actually believed about anything – but he does show you how to think, and how to put a case. If you have three characters in a scene, you’ll get at least five points of view. There are no villains, there are no heroes, everyone is complex, everyone is flawed, everyone thinks they are in the right… And then he also manages to talk on several levels at once. Shakespeare was 'The Simpsons' of his time – not that his characters were yellow and four-fingered, but rather that you can appreciate it as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult, as a person of middle years, or as an old person. He can interrogate a fine point of metaphysics while simultaneously making a dick joke.
Are you a little bit obsessed with William?
Some might say so, but there’s much more to my life. I hated Shakespeare until I was in my late twenties, I used to say I’d never do a Shakespeare play, because all the stuff I’d seen was stuffy and tried to imitate some long-gone British sensibility, but we’ve done away with that, thankfully. I eventually came around to Shakespeare while I was doing my doctorate in theoretical linguistics, and I still make most of my living by working on Australian indigenous languages in the Northern Territory. QSE doesn’t only do Shakespeare, in fact this year alone we’ve worked on a piece about asylum seekers, something on the World War I conscription debates in Queensland, and another piece about Boggo Road Gaol in the 1970s and 1980s.
What is the significance of 'Twelfth Night' to you personally?
It was one of the first professional plays that I ever did, in the USA back in the late 1990s, and this will be my fourth production of it. I’m attracted to its irreverence, and the music. I was a musician long before I was a theatre-maker, playing in bands in Perth in the 1980s and solo gigs in the USA in the 1990s, and this play lets me be a musician again, as well as an actor. I am also drawn to its topsy-turvy nature – with people acting above or below their station. The play’s like a wonderful multi-faceted gem, every time I look at it anew, it seems to be about something different. It’s incredibly witty, incredibly funny, very rude, and very very cruel – like life.
'Twelfth Night' features more music than any other Shakespeare play. What has the preparation been like?
Wonderful! QSE shows regularly feature live music, played by a band comprising members of the cast. We’re a very musical company. I’ve had a great time working with Silvan (who is in the show), writing and arranging our songs, and I love putting Shakespeare’s words or other old lyrics to our own original music. This year’s band features some old and some new members, and an eclectic mix of instruments – guitars, ukulele, clarinet, piano, drums, vocals, kazoos… The great thing about having a band made up of the actors in the show is that the music is never separate from, or tacked on to, the production, the two grow together organically.
For any audience member who has never experienced 'Twelfth Night' before, what can they expect to see?
Cross-dressing, mistaken identity, unrequited love, hilarity, absurdity, grief, cruelty, deprivation, obsession, addiction, homo-eroticism, and a pirate.
For any audience member who is familiar with the work, (without giving away too much) what little surprises will be in store for them?
I think the way that we have staged some of the scenes is fairly innovative, and some of the darker moments will remind you of images from contemporary world events. There are a couple of bold casting choices: two of the most masculine roles, Duke Orsino and the party-loving Sir Toby Belch (great name, most apt), are both played by women. This was a risk, because the play also includes a woman who spends most of the play dressed as a boy (Viola), but the actors in question have really risen to the task.
Describe the thrill and magic of performing Shakespeare works.
Shakespeare has his own energy. If, as an actor, you commit fully to the words, and let yourself be the biggest version of yourself you possibly can, then get the hell out of the way and let the rhythm and sound of the language take over, it plays itself. In fact, you don’t play Shakespeare, Shakespeare plays you. It takes you deeply into new ways of looking at the world, ways of thinking and being, that you might not have imagined yourself capable of.
What separates 'Twelfth Night' from other Shakespearean plays?
Each one is unique, but Shakespeare is also like Stephen King (wait, didn’t I say he was 'The Simpsons'?). What I mean, is that if you look at the individual devices he uses – like twins being mistaken for one another, unrequited love, love triangles, upstart servants, boisterous drunks, music integrated into the action, and so forth – he puts a number of these into any one of his plays. What sets 'Twelfth Night' apart, though, is the way that all the status relationships are turned on their head. In fact, the play gets its name from the final celebration of the Christmas season, 'Twelfth Night' was the night leading into the twelfth day of Christmas (Epiphany, January 6, still celebrated in a few countries), and on this night it was traditional for status relations to be turned upside down – masters served their servants, and the whole thing was presided over by the Lord of Misrule. In this play, the clowns get the upper hand. The older, higher status characters are without direction, and apparently without a moral compass either, while the young and innocent characters are left without role models and blunder their way through the world. I imagine a lot of millennials feel this way.
Can you describe the atmosphere of experiencing Shakespeare under the stars?
It’s a treat! Rather than taking the blank canvas of a traditional theatre and filling it with sets and props and pretending we are somewhere else, outdoor Shakespeare (and Shakespeare’s plays were written, for the most part, to be performed in the open air) makes use of the natural environment and setting. There is always the risk and pleasure of the unexpected – birds, possums and 'Pokemon Go' players often enter our rehearsals and performances, and find themselves wrapped up in the action. Shakespeare makes constant reference to nature, the elements, and the gods, and when it’s performed outdoors, you don’t have to imagine them – they are right there. You’re simultaneously very much in the world and in the fiction of the play. Along with the music before and during the show, the atmosphere is casual and fun, while indoor theatre can often feel formal and a bit stuffy.
What is your essential picnic food?
Wine! Cheese! More wine!!
Does the ensemble often have to ask you to stop speaking in Elizabethan dialect?
Ha ha! Surprisingly, no. Maybe because they are all fluent themselves. I did, however, accidentally write a director’s note the other day, reminding myself to talk to an actor about how his voice would occasionally grate on the back of his throat when he got excited, that read “never let it catch in thy throat”.
