On Thursday I had the opportunity to watch a modern reenactment Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. What amazes me the most is that despite this play being written about 500 years ago, it still lives on! I am familiar with some of Shakespeare’s work from high school English class, however I have never read the Twelfth Night, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I wasn’t disappointed. One of my favorite things about the play is that it takes place in the present, not the 1500s, and yet the same lines are used and still completely make sense. For example, there is a scene in which one of the main characters, Olivia, commands that she be handed her veil. However, instead of a veil, she puts on stylish shades.

However, what was even more engaging was how the play seemed to transgress gender and racial lines. Two of the main characters, Sebastian and Viola, were black and, in addition to this, they both had complicated romantic relationships with both men and women. The director, Simon Godwin, switched up the gender of some the characters in the original play. For example, Malvolia in this play, is Molvolio in the original play. In this way the play now had more layers to explore which are relevant to today’s conversations about gender and sexuality.

After the play, GRF Sara and two other Rose Scholars and I were able to discuss some of the themes in the play. It was helpful the Sara is so knowledgable on Shakespeare and his work which helped us understand the context better. This was my second time attending a play at the Cinemapolis this academic year, and I hope to have the opportunity to attend some more plays next semester.

This Thursday, I watched a pseudo-theater based on William Shakespeare’s Twelfth night. I said “pseudo” because the theater was actually done at National Theater in London; we watched the recorded version at Cinemapolis. In my opinion, the Twelfth night is far ahead of its time in term of the idea it presented in relation to sexuality. We are in the 21^st century and yet this issue still raises controversy among the wider society. I was amazed to see that Shakespeare’s imagination was four hundred years ahead of his time. However, this doesn’t mean that homosexuality did not exist at the time, but it was not acceptable in the society as it was presented in the theater. It was also a romantic comedy theater which made it fun to watch.

Viola was the main character who pretended to be a boy like her twin brother Sebastian, whom she thought had died in a shipwreck, to work for the Duke she loved.  She became the Duke’s messenger to the Countess he loved, Olivia. Ironically, both Oliva and the Duke fell in love with the messenger. The Duke is confused as he finds out that he was attracted to a “boy” (Viola). It turned out that Sebastian was alive, and he later comes and marries the Countess while the Duke marries Viola. My favorite and most fun character to watch was Malvolia, the steward of Olivia’s household. It was interesting to see how she emerged from being a very strict and perfectionist woman to someone who is vulnerable when she found out from a fake letter that Olivia loved her. The letter was written by Maria who also worked for Olivia to take revenge on her. During Shakespeare’s time, it was men who played both the women’s and the men’s part. This theater was different because some of the characters from the original theater changed their gender.

Never having been exposed to  Twelfth Night prior to Slope Day, seeing it for the first time that day was a truly eye-opening experience. The play deftly handled topics on gender identity and sexuality, and even though I’d never had a personal connection with these topics, I was able to quite easily have an emotional connection with the characters and their struggles.

According to Sara, the GRF sponsoring the event, older men at that time would be a sexual mentor, of sorts, to younger men, who would have these initial sexual encounters but would end up marrying women. Gay sex was usually emotionally detached, and in this way homosexuality was relatively de-stigmatized during Shakespeare’s time. In the Twelfth Night, I was shocked that homosexuality was discussed so openly and explicitly, especially for this time period. In an interesting parallel, a male (Cesario) and female (Malvolia) servant were both in love with their master (Orsino) and mistress (Olivia), respectively, although the attraction is only returned by the master.

Introduced at The Elephant, a drag queen made a quick appearance by way of a conversation with Sebastian. Drag queens have an interesting gender identity because they typically identify as men, but also have a persona who is female and referred to with female pronouns. This persona is almost seen as a separate human, a character they play, one that shares a body with the drag queen but is not the same person and at the end of the day they often still identify as male (although there are also plenty of drag queens who come out later as trans*). This is another parallel, albeit inverted, because Viola has a very similar experience in the play where she identifies as a woman but has a male persona (Cesario) who is a distinct character that she doesn’t wish to become.

I really enjoyed how this play handled sexuality and gender identity, because it was written and performed in such a way that these characteristics did not seem to affect a person’s intrinsic self. Someone can have any loyalties, interests, moral inclinations, etc. – the things that make up someone’s intrinsic self – and these aspects will be unaffected by their sexuality or gender identity.

I’ll leave you with one final, poignant question: WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS????