Twelfth Night: the Musical

Written by, William Shakespeare

Musical Score by, Shaina Taub

Introduction to the work:

Viola washes up on the shores of Illyria after a shipwreck believing she has lost her twin brother, Sebastian. Through her grief, she decides to make a life for herself on this strange new island by dressing in her brother’s extra clothing and becoming Cessario, the attendant of the Duke Orsino. Viola comes to love Orsino, but must keep her love secret as his attendant because, unfortunately, he is very taken with the Duchess Olivia and constantly has Cessario visit her in attempts to woo her on Orsino’s behalf. Olivia, however, has no interest in Orsino, but does take a liking to Cessario. Confusing and heartwarming chaos ensues through this love triangle, as well as within Olivia’s court, where some of her attendants and uncle get up to some mischief of their own. Twelfth Night: the Musical is one of Shakespeare’s classic comedies about mistaken identity turned even brighter and more joyful as a musical with Shaina Taub’s score.

Challenges and Goals:

Our main goal with the land of Illyria was to create a space that doesn’t exist in any time in particular and isn’t based off of any place in our world. It ended up being really fun for all of us on the design team to experiment with the principles of design and see just how much we could push the perception of this world. In line with that, Cali Trainor, our set designer, posed the idea of having a pool of water built into the stage for the actors to interact with. This became an exciting challenge for me personally as I had never worked with so much water onstage before and wanted to place a light inside the pool to uplight the actors interacting with the water. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out what fixture would look best, but would also work logistically, seeing as it had to be waterproof. It became a whole other challenge to figure out exactly where to put the fixture in the pool to hide it from the audience from multiple angles, seeing as we were using a thrust configuration for the stage and seating. Overall, it was a great experience and I’m really happy with how it turned out!