During the last few weeks of my journey at LAMDA, I will take on yet another disguise: Viola in Shakespeare's comedic Twelfth Night. However, it's a bit thought-knotting because I'm a girl playing a girl who says she'll pretend to be a eunuch but really just disguises herself as a messenger boy. Typical Shakespeare, right? And who better to direct my peers and me in this puzzling play than Phil, a young and retro-dressing director who graduated from LAMDA. Phil's approach towards the text is very similar to that of my other directors here: focus on the clarity and meaning of the text. From there we work on movement in the space, relationships between characters, and all the other sparks that add to the ultimate flash of the performance. His approach is very academic and we often read a scene at least 3 or 4 times through before we get up on our feet with scripts in hand. Before you read through a scene with Phil, you better make sure you know the meaning of everything your character says--or at least by the second read-through! LAMDA will be renovating their building next year due to a lack of room for all of its many courses; in the meantime, this means that we get to rehearse just a tube stop away in a beautiful church with a massive rehearsal space.
We take advantage of this grand space in our warm ups when we play (what I call) "Steal the Bacon," a game we used to play in 7th grade Physical Education with Coach Carlisle--it's much less dangerous now that we're not all armed with field hockey sticks. However, I did receive quite a mocking from my peers as they exclaimed how Southern "Steal the Bacon" sounded...I shall now be called Miss Katie Maybelle forever. Phil set our play in the '80s, a flashy and bold time period that meshes well with the three main traits of the play: drunkenness, vanity, and love. Let me begin with the first:
1. Drunkenness: The play is called Twelfth Night because it is the twelfth night after Christmas Day, so basically everybody has been partying for twelve days straight. In this play Viola either magically makes for a good looking girl and boy-in-disguise or everyone around her may be a little too tipsy to be seeing things quite so clearly. It would also seem that in Illyria, the coastal setting of the play, people are of a different breed: they don't just feel emotions, but emotions seem to consume them. This kind of reckless and grandiose emotions we most easily associate with characters who have popped a cork or two.
2. Vanity: Talk about confidence (and that's the nice way of putting it)! Even though the beautiful Olivia refuses to love the handsome Duke Orsino, they are truly a match made in heaven--the two of them could just look in mirrors the entire time and be perfectly content. Meanwhile, Feste is too proud of his continuous puns and pranks, which catches hold of Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, and Maria as they are all too confident in their ability to pull the ultimate and meanest prank on Malvolio (Can you blame them? It works!). Last, Viola doesn't even appear to have any qualms or worries about pretending to be a boy (...has she done this before?) and is extremely confident that she can convince anybody in Illyria that she is in fact a guy.
3. Love: Forget love triangles, in this play we're practically dealing with love any-geometrical-shape-with-many-many-sides. Olivia refuses Orsino but loves Cesario who is really Viola who loves Orsino who loves Olivia who loves Sebastian who she thinks is Cesario but Malvolio thinks Olivia loves him. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Even though most people of my generation may be more acquainted with the teenage girl movie version of the play, "She's the Man" with Amanda Bynes, I've learned that with an energetic time period, a hip director, and getting down to the basics (see #1,2,3 above), this play is timeless for every generation...oh, and also: don't pretend to be something you're not.
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| It's hard to be a man...when you're not. --picture from She's the Man |
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