Twelfth Night

Performed in Himmel Park (Tucson) & Arivaca in March 2017

Twin siblings Viola and Sebastian, of the planet Messaline, have been tragically separated when their spaceship crashes onto the planet of Illyria during a violent storm out in the celestial ether. Viola finds themself alone and stranded in a strange land populated by punky scenesters, seemingly straight out of the 1990s! Viola presumes that Sebastian has perished in the crash. To survive, Viola must disguise themself and conform to the gender binary (a concept foreign to their home planet), adopt the name ‘Cesario’ and become the man servant to Duke Orsino, the local Punk Lord. Duke Orsino is madly in love with Olivia, a fashionable punk with high social status….. and also loaded! However, she is mourning the recent death of her brother and father, and busy drowning herself in melancholy, so quite frankly she wants nothing to do with him. Orsino uses Cesario as his wing-man and sends him over to Olivia’s punk house to woo her on his behalf. Terrible mistake – as Cesario manages to catch Olivia’s eye and she ends up falling in love with him instead. Strangely enough, Viola (‘Cesario’) has begun to fall in love with Duke Orsino, as proximity has caused her to  find him most attractive. But Orsino only knows Viola as ‘Cesario’, his man servant! Oh, how things turn awkward and complicated so quickly!

Meanwhile, Olivia’s over-crowded punk house is filled with a motley crew of characters, all eager to indulge in trickery, shenanigans and downright foolish antics. Olivia’s low-life, drunkard, mooch of an uncle, Sir Toby, who has been crashing on her couch all winter, has come up with a dirty scheme to set up his niece with one of his drinking buddies, Sir Andrew. Olivia is not interested in Sir Andrew in the least. Even Sir Toby wouldn’t keep him around if it weren’t for Andrew’s plentiful trust fund and willingness to pay Sir Toby’s nightly bar tab. To stir up the plot even further, Malvolio, one of Olivia’s most trusted servants has fallen into loving admiration of her, but he clearly does not have enough social capital to be with her. Sir Toby, Maria (Olivia’s maid, the true genius of all the schemes) and Fabian (Toby’s best friend) brew up a plan to convince Malvolio that Olivia returns his loving affections, which in the end will truly mortify him and put him back in his place. They have also decided to take advantage of the fact that Sir Andrew is horribly jealous of Cesario, as he is currently the object of Olivia’s affection, by convincing the two to enter into a brawl. All the while The Fool, an oogle of the highest degree, meanders about here and there, singing, dancing and heckling all who cross his path. 


Elsewhere on the planet of Illyria, Sebastian turns out to have survived the spaceship crash! He is rescued by Antonio, who continues to aid him. What madness will ensue when Olivia and her entourage encounter both Cesario and Sebastian on separate occasions, assuming they are the same being!? What spectacle shall we witness when they ultimately come face to face with each other?!


Elsewhere on the planet of Illyria, Sebastian turns out to have survived the spaceship crash! He is rescued by Antonio, who continues to aid him. What madness will ensue when Olivia and her entourage encounter both Cesario and Sebastian on separate occasions, assuming they are the same being!? What spectacle shall we witness when they ultimately come face to face with each other?!

Twelfth Night, 2017

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