The Tower Players are bringing Bermuda to Hillsdale as they begin rehearsing Shakespeare’s classic comedy “Twelfth Night” this week.
While Shakespeare set the scene in Illyria, on the Mediterranean coast off of Italy, director and Professor of Theatre George Angell will set the play in 18th-century Bermuda. He said he believes the new setting fits the play extremely well, since the drama begins with a shipwreck.
“There are a few things in the play that apply specifically to Illyria or to Italy, but by and large I thought the play applies to the English sense of romantic global spots,” Angell said. He set one character as a British governor of Bermuda, others as merchants, and another as a pirate. The set will consist mainly of two ships.
Facing a rehearsal period two weeks shorter than usual, the cast plunged into preparations on Monday to prepare for their Oct. 7 opening night.
“If you had asked me two nights ago, I would have said I didn’t know if I was excited,” Angell said on Tuesday. “But after working with the cast last night and tonight, I know things are going to work out.”
An earlier calendar year led to a shorter rehearsal period. Typically, theater productions run either during homecoming or another weekend, and the orchestra performs during Parents Weekend. But this year, since Parents Weekend is only a month after classes begin, the orchestra doesn’t have enough time to prepare an entire performance, so “Twelfth Night” will run during Parents Weekend instead.
Because of the change, Angell held auditions in the spring for the first time and tasked characters with memorizing their lines over the summer.
“It was really easy to forget about,” junior Dani Morey said. “A lot of people memorized at the beginning of summer and then forgot them. I put it off until the last minute, which probably wasn’t a good idea, but at least they’re fresh now.”
“The biggest challenge right now is that we were supposed to have all of our lines memorized right off the bat,” junior Grace Link said. She will be playing Viola, the heroine in a complicated love triangle. Though Link chose not to comment on her memorization, Angell insisted he was optimistic about the work the actors did over the summer.
Link said she believes the challenge will bring the actors closer together.
“It will be a lot of time and really focused in a short period,” she said. “That’s what I’m excited for. Every day with the same people working your butt off.”
“The cast just gels really well together,” Morey added. “Everyone is perfect and very professional and on top of their game.”
According to Link, the comedy attracted several new actors.
“It’s kind of an interesting group because a lot of the people that were cast aren’t ordinarily in the plays,” she said. “I think George was really interested in getting this kind of diverse type of people — some who are more experienced and less experienced — but the talent was all there.” Angell said the group is highly energetic.
“People have an interest in doing Shakespeare that they might not have in other or more modern genres,” he said. “The theatre majors are always out, but Shakespeare always draws both big audiences and large numbers of people to auditions.”
Link, Angell, and Morey all expressed their enthusiasm for the fight scene choreographer, who is a Hillsdale alumna, as well. She has studied at a stunt school in Las Vegas, spent a year in a China stunt show, and toured the country as a stunt choreographer.
“Twelfth Night” runs Parents Weekend, Oct. 7-11.
