| Though we’re still in the midst of Lady rehearsals, I am writing this blog as I fly back from LA after a series of production meetings for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which I am directing this summer at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Talk about changing mindsets! I lurch from up-to-the minute topicality to a 400-year-old melancholy comedy of gender confusion and romance. It’s a 36-hour trip and yesterday I talked for 10 hours straight in meeting after meeting with designers and the producers. Utah’s mission statement is to present Shakespeare’s plays roughly within the time frame of his life, and since I felt that it might look and feel like the last production they may have done in Utah, I tried to set it in the actual Illyria that Shakespeare did, which is really Albania/Bosnia/Herzegovina!
Since Shakespeare refers to Duke Orsino as a "Salt Water pirate," this production will have a pirate-like feel to it and Olivia’s household will be inflected with an Ottoman Empire style…very East meets West. This clash of cultures sets up the stark difference between Orsino and Olivia, a match not meant to be and provides the foundation for the abuse of the Puritanical Malvolio.
It will give us the chance to see a different production look at Utah, while staying within the time frame that their mission calls for. I love the exotic look and feel of the clothes and the set, and my designers seem excited by the challenge. They have been generous and inspirational to me and I can’t wait to work with them more closely. In March (when I will be directing Glengarry Glen Ross at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta) I will fly to Cedar City once more for a meeting to finalize the project before rehearsals start this summer.
I will blog again soon, but for now I must catch some shut-eye. It was a 7am flight and we are passing over a very snowy Denver. It looks like they really got hammered down there. I wonder if the flowers are still blooming in Central Park, where it was 70 degrees on Saturday?
More Anon,
Beej
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