The FSW Black Box Theatre is performing William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” this weekend. While The Bard is most often associated with imposing dramas like “Macbeth” and “King Lear,” “Twelfth Night” is actually a comedy.
Written in 1601, the play explores the fluidity of gender roles and the unpredictability of love while navigating themes of mistaken identity and the topsy-turvy nature of human relationships.
Freshman theater student Kayley Edwards offers an interesting take on this Shakespeare comedy.
“It’s more like an 'SNL' skit, for the time.”
Edwards plays Viola. She is a twin, but she and her brother, Sebastian, are separated in a shipwreck. Each thinks the other was lost at sea.
“So she goes to serve Orsino, who she falls in love with,” said Edwards. “But since she’s disguised as a man, she can’t tell him she loves him. To make her problem worse, Orsino tasks her with winning over [a wealthy noble woman] Olivia on his behalf.”
But instead of falling for Orsino, Olivia swoons over Viola, or at least the man Olivia pretends to be.
“It’s just a very complicated love triangle,” Edwards conceded. “But in the end, Viola gets everything she’s been hoping for and wanting. So it’s really awesome because sometimes characters don’t get that full resolution, but I feel like Viola really does get closure at the end of the play.”
Directed by Stuart Brown, this production of “Twelfth Night” possesses a number of characteristics that audiences are sure to appreciate.
At the top of the list is the rare opportunity to experience Shakespeare up close and personal. The audience in the FSW Black Box Theatre is a mere matter of feet from the edge of set, which is ground-level.
“If you’re used to seeing shows in an auditorium, get ready for your world to be rocked,” said first year theater student Ella Barber, who plays Feste. “It’s so intimate. It’s so amazing. You really get to immerse yourself in the performance. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever felt.”
Edwards agrees.
“The actors come right up to the people in the audience,” she said. “They come right up to you and they’ll look you right in the eye and start talking to you.”
“One of the advantages you have performing in a black box, because it’s such a close space, is that it's intimate,” underscored Ian Buttion, who plays Sir Andrew Aguecheek, one of the fools in the play. “As an audience member, you can feel way closer to the characters than seeing it on TV or in an auditorium of a theater with a traditional proscenium.”
In most shows, the actors pretend that the audience doesn’t exist. Toward that end, they only look at and talk to the other characters on stage.
In “Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare periodically breaks the so-called “fourth wall” by having his characters speak directly to the audience, taking them into their confidence and making them confederates in the shenanigans taking place on stage, part of which involves perpetrating a cruel prank on a pompous courtesan by the name of Malvolio.
Edwards expects this and the audience’s proximity to the actors to especially impact first-time theatergoers.
“People who’ve never seen any live theater, for them, it’s going to be a very wild experience to be that close to an actor and to get the human experience, especially given the number of times we look at, address and connect with the audience. I think that will change their mind about Shakespeare and enable them to connect with him on a personal level, especially being so close to the actors.”
Buttion is also excited by the prospect of interacting with the audience in these ways.
“Even looking out into the audience and asking them, ‘Is this what the word means? I’m kind of stupid. I don’t know what this means. Can someone help me out?’ I do find enjoyment in playing with the audience in this way,” Buttion said.
In addition to making Shakespeare personal, FSW’s production of “Twelfth Night” is denoted by a well-constructed and brightly painted set along with brilliantly conceived period costumes.
“Roberta is our costume mistress. She’s so fantastic. I love what I’m wearing. I feel very fool-ish,” said Ella Barber.
"And Ashley, our scenic designer, is also super talented and just coming to see the show to see her work on the set is so worth it.”
Performances were last weekend and continue Thursday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m.
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In the broader context of Shakespeare’s other comedic works, “Twelfth Night” is celebrated for its festive and carnival-like atmosphere. In it, Shakespeare invokes many of the traditions of the Twelfth Night holiday, in which people gather on January 5 (the 12th day of Christmas) - a tradition still observed in parts of the U.K.
Ella Barber is a second semester theater major. She has been performing in theater productions for roughly a decade. She began performing at Veterans Park Middle School, but really improved as both a performer and theater student at Lehigh Senior High School.
“My director was Miguel Cintron,” Barber noted. “He’s basically taught me everything I know. He’s fantastic.”
Of course, that was until she landed in the FSW Theater program.
“Stuart Brown, my director and professor here, is absolutely amazing and he has really shaped us as actors and shaped this program,” said Barber. “And I’m so excited to be helping to put some of his work and my cast mates’ work on the stage.”
Barber is no stranger to Shakespeare.
“I’ve done ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and I’ve also been in a Shakespeare parody called ‘Midsummer Jersey,’ set on the Jersey Shore …real interesting,” Barber said.
From her perspective as an actor, she loves doing Shakespeare because “you’re literally opened up to a whole new world of language,” said Barber. “You have to play with a lot of words in your mouth is what Stuart [Brown] tells us. Weird words, like ‘pulchritude’ or ‘consecrate.’”
Of course, that makes memorizing the dialogue more challenging. “It’s harder to relate it to your own life and what you, as a person, would say, rather than your character,” observed Barber. “But it’s all part of the challenge, and the best part of it is you learn from it and get to become a master of things like that.”
Kayley Edwards is a dual-enrollment freshman who has set her sights on a career in Christian films after appearing in “The Remedy” in 2023 with local actor Sophia Brook. “I played her best friend, who kind of brought her back to Christ. That was one of my favorite experiences that I’ve had because it was so different from anything else that I’ve done.”
Edwards has more than five years of experience in theater, mainly at Fort Myers Theater.
“I have done 19 musicals, two straight plays and 'The Remedy,' of course, as well as ‘Peter and the Starcatcher’ at FSW last Fall, which ranks as my favorite production, followed closely by ‘Newsies’ at Fort Myers Theater.”
The latter production was for the Junior Theatre Festival in California.
Aside from reading Shakespeare in a literature class, “Twelfth Night” is Edwards' first brush with The Bard. Kayley is not put off by Shakespeare’s word choice, but she does find his circumlocution problematic.
“He has a roundabout way of saying things,” Edwards noted. “Everything is like backwards, so it was very hard to understand. But I’ve very much enjoyed it once I got the hang of it, and when you stop thinking ‘Omigosh, it’s Shakespeare’ and just read the storyline and really understand it, it becomes a lot more relatable.”
In Edwards’ estimation, Shakespeare’s arcane language is tantamount to a character itself. “There’s just so many fun words, and it does add like a whole other layer that once you dig through it, you feel more connected with the show.”
Ian Buttion is a second-year student at FSW. He also has some Shakespeare experience.
“In my Cypress Lake High School production, we did ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and I was William Shakespeare, and Omigod, the language was so different than any other show that I’ve ever done.”
Buttion found the language in “Twelfth Night” a bit daunting at first. “You really have to understand what you’re saying, because if you don’t know what you’re saying, it’s going to sound like word salad.”
Ian plays Sir Andrew. “He’s one of the fools in the show,” Buttion summarized. “He’s really dumb. He doesn’t really get any of the jokes. But he thinks he’s very smart. He thinks he’s really brave. But in reality, he’s just a fool. He’s so fun to play.”
While Buttion did theater in high school, he’s found that acting at the collegiate level is vastly more challenging.
“Coming into college and working with Stuart Brown, our director, he completely changed the way I see acting,” said Buttion. “I really see it as more of an art and appreciate it a lot more.”
