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Shakespeare's comedy "Twelfth Night" coming to ORU
By Sarah Lockwood
What happens when a girl of the fourteenth century, left on her own
in a strange country, decides to dress as a boy and get a job? Total
mayhem. Never mind that she decides to make this change during the
Twelfth Night celebrations of that city. Viola/Cesario captures the
audience with her wit and propensity for survival in this rollicking
tale of plot twists, practical jokes and preposterous love stories.
 Professor
Frank Gallagher, director of the ORU Drama Department's production
of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," says that Twelfth Night
marked the end of the Christmas holidays. Celebrating the absurdity
of the social hierarchy, the peasant could chat with the lady, the
lord could discourse with the commoner and the school boys could mimic
their masters during this time of escape from the inevitable lag after
Christmas.
"It's such a joyful, fun play," Gallagher said. "But
I've always seen it performed very seriously as a romance or a comic
drama. Instead, it should be done as if everything were a big joke."
Training for this show began in January, with Gallagher's Performing
Shakespeare class. This gave the department a group of people trained
to enjoy and understand the Bard well to portray his work on stage.
Add to the mix other fantastically talented actors and actresses and
you get a cast prepared to help their audience understand and (more
importantly) enjoy Shakespeare.
"What I've been telling the actors more than anything is that
nothing is very serious in this play," Gallagher said. "Instead
of a conversation, you're having a friendly competition with words."
This perspective leads to deliberately big encounters that flow more
like dances than the story line might imply. Confusion reigns supreme
until the very end of this poetic revelry. Disguise leads to romance,
which leads to sword-fighting that leads to some very big surprises
for Viola and the intriguing cast of characters.
"Gallagher's style is really free, especially with blocking,"
said Anna Thorpe, the student assistant director for the play. He
gives actors a lot of freedom to do their own thing with their characters.
Sometimes he runs the same scene two times in a row doing it completely
differently to see which way he likes better."
Professor Gallagher's passion for Shakespeare shows in his animated
expression as he talks. "The over-riding theme for Twelfth Night'
is the necessity of play. We are all such hard workers in this society;
this campus is no exception: I want to bring Shakespeare to life.
He's not dull or hard to understand. I want the audience to see him
as lively and fun as I see him."
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