Last night we had a first, and what a first it was!
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, is at its core a story about confusion and duality and the effects of the visit from the Lord of Misrule, and, well, to put it simply, the Lord of Misrule paid a visit to us!
Over the couple of days leading up to our performance, three of our cast members had medical emergencies (all are in recovery, safe and sound), and thus we found ourselves three characters short of a play. Our fabulous cast, however, rose above it like nothing we had seen before! I love every single one of them and have full gratitude for what they helped accomplish, for we'd made a choice: we'd turn the play into a rehearsed reading and allow our actors to be as fully in character as they felt comfortable with under the new circumstances (taking neurodiversity and dislexia into consideration), and we both read for all three missing characters, book in hand, while everyone around us made the best use of the character they had become over the last four months. We stripped back the stage, forgoing the beautiful sea and sky curtain Stephen had put together in favour of a props table so that both of us could reach easily for the bits and pieces of the three characters that we hadn't rehearsed for and so that the whole setting worked as a rehearsed reading. Our cast members sat around us and enjoyed the ad-libbing that ensued, and they still managed to not break character when they came on stage with either of us, even though both Stephen and I had our books in hand to keep up with every scene change that our missing actors would have helped with (and so as to not have our brains melt with the effort that a neuro-diverse brain has to make in order to change last minute everything that has been rehearsed). And, let's also admit, it must not have been easy to keep their characters by my side, especially when I started bursting out in giggles after jumping from Antonio to Maria, to myself as Olivia and back again!
Then there were obviously the moments when Stephen or I would have ended up talking to ourselves because we shared a scene with the character that we were trippling with, so we had to ask two of our other actors to read in for the missing characters, and thus Sebastian ended up having three shapes and sizes, and no cap or yes cap depending on who remembered to put it on (or wether I remembered to put it on Sebastian's head or not!). As it happened, we did end up talking to ourselves a couple of times, and a personal favourite moment for me was Stephen fighting with himself as Sebastian and Toby Belch and me running up to him shouting in anger and then holding his hands and asking him to forgive my cousin and to be mine! Needless to say I couldn't stop giggling after that!
My scenes with Feste, with "Cesario" and with Malvolio were fabulous and nearly perfect, as every single one of them kept character and made the best of their time on stage, and I was able to keep my character to begin with until near the end when I was jumping back and forth so much that my brain had turned to mulch. The yellow stockings scene was as brilliant as we had planned, I'm proud to say, even though we had to change the setting completely to accommodate the rehearsed reading atmosphere, and I am looking forward to performing it with Tom Hector as the perfectly cast Malvolio that he was when we set a new date for the performance!
Our Feste, Ezra Aquinas Wardell, is a true star in the making. He stayed in character throughout and made me, Stephen and Janetta Morton, our "other" Maria, really comfortable in our scenes regardless of whether we were playing our own character or the newly assigned one. He is worth following, as he will go far! Janetta, wondrous veteran that she is, kept her calm and jumped into action whilst also providing a reassuring energy to everyone involved. Her three characters were brought to life as individually as she had set herself up to, and she stood her ground as Maria when needed.
Our fantastic Viola, Emmelaine Leighton-Maccardell, shone with every single line and even managed to keep me going when I said my lines in the wrong order, reacting accordingly and creating a genuinely poignant atmosphere between us. At one point I came on stage wearing Antonio's cap (which I had forgotten to give to Sebastian when it was time), and I took it off and threw it behind the screen, owning the joke, and she managed to keep a straight face and the emotion of the scene even though everyone else was in stitches. Her relationship with Orsino was also fantastic to behold, also making the emotion of Viola's love for Orsino feel absolutely real even though Stephen had just finished playing her twin brother. She deserves to shine, and we can't wait to see her play Viola in her full splendor!
Kesley Cage and Talitha Wade, as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Fabian respectively, we're also utterly fantastic! Talitha, like Ezra and Emmelaine, did not break character once and gave Fabian the depth that we cast her for, and Kesley's impressive delivery of the foppish knight more than made up for the confusion that he was thrown into by the revolving characters around him, fate that was also suffered by Tim Parker as he had to bid Janetta's officer to arrest me and a of a sudden forgetting who was playing Antonio between me and Stephen. His delivery as Curio Valentine was impeccable until that moment of completely understandable confusion (and the ammount of times I had to remind the other actors and audience that I was playing Antonio or Maria was actually funny in itself anyway), and his patience in having to deal with the changes is truly worth a mention - neurodiversity can be a huge block for some people under said circumstances, but the way all our neuro-diverse actors dealt with these circumstances is commendable to say the least!
As for our actors who weren't there, they had been perfectly cast and for all of us it was a shame not to have been able to put on the production that we had rehearsed for for the last four months, but all of us are very excited for the moment when we're able to set it the way we plan it! Real friendships grew between the cast, and some of us have experienced a closeness that can only happen when improv takes over, so maybe the Lord of Misrule had it right all along?
I mean, at the end of the play I had to tell my newlywed husband Sebastian, as played by Tom that I was Antonio while my actual husband Stephen - who had been tripling as Sebastian until then, and who I had been seducing as Antonio until then while I rejected him as Olivia - asked our good friend Emmelaine to marry him whether he was Cesario or Viola (and whom I had been seducing as Olivia), and I gently reminded Tom that I was his wife Olivia again so that we could all kiss each other and live happily ever after... Then Tom jumped behind the screen, dropped his trousers and came out as Malvolio to confront me (as Olivia, not Antonio or Maria) about the yellow stockings incident!
As Fabian put it very wisely, If that had been played upon the stage I would've condemned it as an improvable fiction!
Sandra Cole ~ Actress, Model, Writer, Witch
His & Hers Theatre Company
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, is at its core a story about confusion and duality and the effects of the visit from the Lord of Misrule, and, well, to put it simply, the Lord of Misrule paid a visit to us!
Over the couple of days leading up to our performance, three of our cast members had medical emergencies (all are in recovery, safe and sound), and thus we found ourselves three characters short of a play. Our fabulous cast, however, rose above it like nothing we had seen before! I love every single one of them and have full gratitude for what they helped accomplish, for we'd made a choice: we'd turn the play into a rehearsed reading and allow our actors to be as fully in character as they felt comfortable with under the new circumstances (taking neurodiversity and dislexia into consideration), and we both read for all three missing characters, book in hand, while everyone around us made the best use of the character they had become over the last four months. We stripped back the stage, forgoing the beautiful sea and sky curtain Stephen had put together in favour of a props table so that both of us could reach easily for the bits and pieces of the three characters that we hadn't rehearsed for and so that the whole setting worked as a rehearsed reading. Our cast members sat around us and enjoyed the ad-libbing that ensued, and they still managed to not break character when they came on stage with either of us, even though both Stephen and I had our books in hand to keep up with every scene change that our missing actors would have helped with (and so as to not have our brains melt with the effort that a neuro-diverse brain has to make in order to change last minute everything that has been rehearsed). And, let's also admit, it must not have been easy to keep their characters by my side, especially when I started bursting out in giggles after jumping from Antonio to Maria, to myself as Olivia and back again!
Then there were obviously the moments when Stephen or I would have ended up talking to ourselves because we shared a scene with the character that we were trippling with, so we had to ask two of our other actors to read in for the missing characters, and thus Sebastian ended up having three shapes and sizes, and no cap or yes cap depending on who remembered to put it on (or wether I remembered to put it on Sebastian's head or not!). As it happened, we did end up talking to ourselves a couple of times, and a personal favourite moment for me was Stephen fighting with himself as Sebastian and Toby Belch and me running up to him shouting in anger and then holding his hands and asking him to forgive my cousin and to be mine! Needless to say I couldn't stop giggling after that!
My scenes with Feste, with "Cesario" and with Malvolio were fabulous and nearly perfect, as every single one of them kept character and made the best of their time on stage, and I was able to keep my character to begin with until near the end when I was jumping back and forth so much that my brain had turned to mulch. The yellow stockings scene was as brilliant as we had planned, I'm proud to say, even though we had to change the setting completely to accommodate the rehearsed reading atmosphere, and I am looking forward to performing it with Tom Hector as the perfectly cast Malvolio that he was when we set a new date for the performance!
Our Feste, Ezra Aquinas Wardell, is a true star in the making. He stayed in character throughout and made me, Stephen and Janetta Morton, our "other" Maria, really comfortable in our scenes regardless of whether we were playing our own character or the newly assigned one. He is worth following, as he will go far! Janetta, wondrous veteran that she is, kept her calm and jumped into action whilst also providing a reassuring energy to everyone involved. Her three characters were brought to life as individually as she had set herself up to, and she stood her ground as Maria when needed.
Our fantastic Viola, Emmelaine Leighton-Maccardell, shone with every single line and even managed to keep me going when I said my lines in the wrong order, reacting accordingly and creating a genuinely poignant atmosphere between us. At one point I came on stage wearing Antonio's cap (which I had forgotten to give to Sebastian when it was time), and I took it off and threw it behind the screen, owning the joke, and she managed to keep a straight face and the emotion of the scene even though everyone else was in stitches. Her relationship with Orsino was also fantastic to behold, also making the emotion of Viola's love for Orsino feel absolutely real even though Stephen had just finished playing her twin brother. She deserves to shine, and we can't wait to see her play Viola in her full splendor!
Kesley Cage and Talitha Wade, as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Fabian respectively, we're also utterly fantastic! Talitha, like Ezra and Emmelaine, did not break character once and gave Fabian the depth that we cast her for, and Kesley's impressive delivery of the foppish knight more than made up for the confusion that he was thrown into by the revolving characters around him, fate that was also suffered by Tim Parker as he had to bid Janetta's officer to arrest me and a of a sudden forgetting who was playing Antonio between me and Stephen. His delivery as Curio Valentine was impeccable until that moment of completely understandable confusion (and the ammount of times I had to remind the other actors and audience that I was playing Antonio or Maria was actually funny in itself anyway), and his patience in having to deal with the changes is truly worth a mention - neurodiversity can be a huge block for some people under said circumstances, but the way all our neuro-diverse actors dealt with these circumstances is commendable to say the least!
As for our actors who weren't there, they had been perfectly cast and for all of us it was a shame not to have been able to put on the production that we had rehearsed for for the last four months, but all of us are very excited for the moment when we're able to set it the way we plan it! Real friendships grew between the cast, and some of us have experienced a closeness that can only happen when improv takes over, so maybe the Lord of Misrule had it right all along?
I mean, at the end of the play I had to tell my newlywed husband Sebastian, as played by Tom that I was Antonio while my actual husband Stephen - who had been tripling as Sebastian until then, and who I had been seducing as Antonio until then while I rejected him as Olivia - asked our good friend Emmelaine to marry him whether he was Cesario or Viola (and whom I had been seducing as Olivia), and I gently reminded Tom that I was his wife Olivia again so that we could all kiss each other and live happily ever after... Then Tom jumped behind the screen, dropped his trousers and came out as Malvolio to confront me (as Olivia, not Antonio or Maria) about the yellow stockings incident!
As Fabian put it very wisely, If that had been played upon the stage I would've condemned it as an improvable fiction!
Sandra Cole ~ Actress, Model, Writer, Witch
His & Hers Theatre Company
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