“I regard theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another what it means to be a human being.”
- Oscar Wilde, Playwright
“To act is to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”
- Sanford Meisner, Actor and Teacher
“Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit.”
- Henry Adams, Historian
I’m not sure that I had ever picked up Twelfth Night prior to the year 2020. Like everyone, I was stuck at home and in desperate need of something to do with my time. Anything at all to simply pass the sluggish hours between midnights while pacing the same spots around my home day after day, week after week.
Through some stroke of luck, I was introduced to the Shakespeare 2020 Project, a collective reading of Shakespeare’s entire canon broken up throughout the calendar year, with weekly discussion threads taking place on a Facebook group over whichever work had been assigned to that particular week.
Naturally, with a background in theatre and, at that time, a job teaching 9th Grade Literature, I had read (and performed) my fair share of Shakespeare. But it had been the hits, the top dogs, the heavy hitters: Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and, my personal favorite of the Comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These had been my touchstones, my introductions, my safe points to explore the themes and masterful exemplars of wordsmithing as presented by these works.
But most, up to that year, had eluded my grasp. Whether it was in terms of interest or in temporal freedom (or lack thereof) to try something beyond the scope of my typical order of Shakespeare—an entree of “To be or not to be” with a side order of “Lord, what fools these mortals be” and a sweet double helping of “The Balcony Scene” for dessert, if you will—I am not entirely sure. But those long days filled with anxiety, boredom, and quickly approaching parenthood sparked an interest in me to explore something, anything at all. And my choice was the works of Shakespeare.
Since that time, Twelfth Night has been a play that intrigued me. But up until this past April, it was one I was convinced would never cross my mind as an option for a high school season. But upon reading it once more, perhaps for the third time in my life at that particular point, I found within it something I had never noticed before: communion. The title of the play comes from the festival of the same name: it is the twelfth night of Christmas, the eve of the Epiphany. As such, it is the final night of Christmas festivities, and, perhaps as to be expected, it has historically been celebrated with gusto. It is a festival of merrymaking, of disguise.
Of chaos
Of revelry.
And, most importantly, it is a festival of the communion of human beings gathered alongside one another to celebrate the great gift of our humanity.
As we explore this classic play in the context of something a bit chaotic, I hope that you find within it the same sense of community and belonging that it represents.
Merry Christmas, and happy holidays.
Enjoy the show.
Trey Rutherford
