Spring play places Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 1960s

Twelfth Night cast members in this publicity photo are, left to right, Mariah Hunt, James Murphy, andAva Magoon.

Elvis Presley and the Beatles find their way into Saint Michael’s College’s spring Main Stage production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with socially aware, playful and innovative direction from adjunct acting teacher Melissa Stern Lourie, a veteran Vermont actor and theater educator.

“I want to de-mystify Shakespeare,” said Lourie. “Twelfth Night is a celebration of life and of music. I want our audience to have fun, to enjoy the music and the very human and identifiable characters. The play has a lot to say about love and identity, so it’s not just silly. It’s a meditation on human folly and human complexity.”

The production will run March 2-5, 2022 at 7 p.m. each evening in the McCarthy Arts Center Theatre on the Saint Michel’s campus, with free admission, first-come, first served. Audience members are required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test conducted within 72 hours of the performance.

Director Lourie explained her creative choice of setting this production in the 1960s. “Because Twelfth Night is about revelry and rebellion and because it contains a lot of music, I thought it would do very well in the 1960s, an era when the strictures of society are loosening, and many people are challenging social norms,” said Lourie. “I often find music as the way in when thinking about how to set a Shakespeare play. Particular songs will strike me as expressive of the essence of the play or parts of the play.”

Another factor in her choice of Twelfth Night is that she “needed a play with good female parts as I knew my actor pool would be mostly female.” In addition, “there is so much gender ambiguity in this play (which was originally performed by all men), I felt like it would be fun to have women play some of the male characters as well.” She said the play “is playful, silly and rich with comedic situations and characters.”

Here is the cast for this coming Saint Michel’s production of Twelfth Night: Viola, a lady of Messaline shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, Ava Magoon ’22; Olivia, an Illyrian countess, Mariah Hunt ’24; Maria, her waiting-gentlewoman, Sadie Chamberlain ’25;Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s kinsman, Eric Reid-St. John*;Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby’s companion, Jason Lorber**; Malvolio, steward in Olivia’s household, Madeline Shanley ’23; Feste, Olivia’s fool or jester, Art Resch ’24; Fabian, a friend and comrade of Sir Toby, Mckenzie Rowbotham ’24; Orsino, duke of Illyria; James Murphy ’24; Valentine, gentleman serving Orsino, and other roles, Aimee Turcotte ’23; Curio, gentleman serving Orsino, and other roles, Gabe Kelsey ’24; Sebastian, viola’s twin brother; Corban Ridlon ’22; Servant to Olivia, Matt Tupaj ’23; *guest artist; **guest artist and faculty spouse of Nat Lew

Others involved in the production are: Scenic & Lighting Designer – John Paul Devlin; Costume Designer – Peter Harrigan; Sound Designer – Julia Moriarty; Choreographer – Mckenzie Rowbotham ’24; Production Stage Manager – Ainsley Cook ’24; Assistant Stage Manager – Matt Tupaj ’23.

Melissa Stern Lourie

“Working with the St. Mike’s cast and crew has been a great pleasure,” the director said. “The students have been absorbing so much information with ease and enthusiasm. They are bright and curious and I can’t wait to see what they do onstage. There is a special spirit of cooperation and community at St. Mike’s and this is clearly reflected in their attitudes towards this project. I also have the privilege of working with the Theater Departments professors, Peter Harrigan and John Devlin, both experts in their fields of costume design and scenic/lighting design. It is really nice to have all these resources at my fingertips!”

 Historical context

Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night in about 1601 for Twelfth Night Festivities which happen on January 5, the last day of the 12 days of Christmas before Epiphany celebrations, Lourie said, explaining that in the Middle Ages and in Shakespeare’s time, Christmas was a long and festive affair, with much eating and drinking and merrymaking during the period culminating in Twelfth Night.

“One of the aspects of Twelfth Night celebrations was that social structures and hierarchies of the time could be turned upside down,” she said. “The lowly could rule over the great, and there was a feeling of anything goes.  The oppressions of a very strictly regulated society were temporarily lifted, and relief was found in symbolic ways of letting loose and getting revenge.”

The plot of Twelfth Night revolves around a pair of shipwrecked twins, Viola and Sebastian, who each survive, but believe the other drowned. They land in the fantasy world of Illyria, where Viola disguises herself as a man and offers herself in service to the Duke Orsino, who rules in this world, believing that will be the best way to keep herself safe in a strange land. The whole play involves a lot of gender confusion, practical jokes gone wrong, and other silliness, she said.

Why the contemporary setting?

The director said she decided that “the 1950’s and crooners like the early Elvis Presley, with their extreme romanticism, would be perfect to embody the character of Duke Orsino, who is a hopeless romantic; in love with love. He has the most famous line in the show…. ‘If music be the food of love, play on!’ – and Duke Orsino also represents the social order of the past”

She felt the character Olivia’s household, with its rebels and troublemakers, would be a perfect counterpoint to Orsino’s world. “They are into the new scene of freedom and self-indulgence, the Beatles being their band of choice. I love the music of this era, of course, having grown up in the ‘60s,” she said. I wanted to feature music prominently, and replace Shakespeare’s music with Elvis and Beatles tunes because for me, the spirit of the thing is most important and, in this case, I think the spirit of this music is very compatible with what Shakespeare was trying to say.”

“The tension between those that want to keep order and those who want to break it down is strong in the play and strong in this particular decade,” she said.

When thinking about how the play should look, Lourie said, “the film Yellow Submarine came to mind as a colorful, charming embodiment of a sea-centered world. And since Illyria is a fantasy in the first place, why not give it a 1960s psychedelic twist?”

The director said she works very hard to make Shakespeare clear and understandable to a modern audience: “.First, I cut a lot of text that is too archaic in its references or just doesn’t make sense today. I streamline wherever I can,” she said. “I don’t want any Shakespeare show to last more than two hours. I think today’s audiences appreciate that. “

She said the actors work on the text for weeks before we start staging the show to make sure they understand the language and can communicate it clearly. “This is not an easy task at first for those unfamiliar with how this complex and dense language works,” she said. “The goal is to make it sound completely natural, although characters express themselves in terms larger than life. I am not above substituting a word here and there to make things clearer, because some words have changed their meanings from Shakespeare’s times to ours.”

Lourie’s long immersion in theater includes being the founder and artistic director of the Middlebury Actors Workshop from 2001 to the present. With an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater, she has taught theater and directed a great many productions through the years, in Vermont and elsewhere. She has been teaching at Saint Michael’s since fall of 2019. Said Peter Harrigan of the Saint Michel’s Fine Arts/Theatre faculty, a frequent Main Stage show director, of Lourie’s role with Twelfth Night, “We occasionally have guest directors and wanted to take advantage of her expertise with Shakespeare.”

The director feels Shakespeare’s stories are anything but boring, and his characters are totally human and relatable. “The subject matter is not academic or highbrow,” she said. “In fact, it’s very earthy. Shakespeare’s genius was to encompass all human experience, without judgement, and to show us ourselves as we really are, then and now.”

“Foolery doth walk about the orb. It shines everywhere, like the sun,” Lourie said, quoting a famous line from Twelfth Night.