Fresh take on Twelfth Night inspired by hit series Game of Thrones
Repercussion Theatre’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park comes to the West Island with a fresh take on the gender-bending Twelfth Night (or What You Will) inspired in part by the hit HBO television series Game of Thrones. The first of four West Island stops is at Ecclestone Park in Kirkland on July 8.
“Our set design references-Games of Thrones in the way (the series) created its own world,” artistic director Amanda Kellock said. “You can’t situate Game of Thrones. It’s not medieval — it’s more of a parallel universe.”
Kellock wanted that same sort of distance from any real place for her inaugural production as artistic director of Repercussion, so set designer Marjolaine Provençal came up with a garden-labyrinth design and costume designer Evita Karasek dressed the cast in clothes that function more as an extension of the character’s personality than a representation of any particular era.
“We started from a place which accepts certain truths about Illyria (Shakespeare’s setting for the play),” Kellock said. “It’s by an ocean, is a bit fantastical, is inhabited by both puritans and drunk pirates and that it has a strict social order, with some inhabitants set on subverting that order. Designing a garden as a maze was so exciting and un specific. It could be Westmount. It could be Versailles.”
The comedy follows the travails of twins — a boy and a girl — who are separated by circumstance and desperate to find each other. The girl dressing like a boy out of necessity adds to the confusion as the two navigate separate and labyrinthine paths in search of each other.
Kellock has had an ongoing relationship — as both actor and director—with Repercussion Theatre for years, but this is her first production since being named artistic director in January. Shek new right away that she wanted to tackle Twelfth Night because it was one of two Repercussion productions—along with Macbeth — that utterly engaged her as a teen watching the company perform in Montreal parks.
“What’s so exciting about Shakespeare is that we get to push ideas he was trying to expand on that are still so relevant today,” Kellock said. “Gender and sexual identity (which are addressed in Twelfth Night) are topics people are talking about today.”
Twelfth Night is labelled a comedy but Kellock said it is a comedy with layers, and not everybody gets their happy ending.
“Yes, it’s funny, but there is also a lot of melancholy,” she said. “That’s what is so great about Shakespeare. He didn’t tie everything up a the end with a big bow. The best comedy comes from a place of sadness and longing. Life is about sadness and about joy. Both are necessary.”
Three-hour afternoon theatre workshops for teens 13 to 17 are being held in Pierre-fonds-Roxboro and Beaconsfield the afternoon before the show. The teens will then participate in pre-show theatrical festivities. The workshop costs $25 and registration is required.
Other Twelfth Night destinations in the West Island are the East Community Centrein Pierrefonds-Roxboro (July 14), Pine Beach Park in Dorval (July 23) and Centennial Park in Beaconsfield (July 24). Showtime is 7 p.m.
For Repercussion Theatre Shakespeare-in-the-Park tour details, to check for performance cancellations due to rain, or to register for teen theatre workshops, visit repercussiontheatre.com. A freewill donation of $10 is suggested for people over 10.