Theater camp takes center stage in mystery novel
For Janet Thielke’s debut novel, the author wrote a story she would’ve liked to have read during her own formative, middle-grade years. “Twelfth,” a tale of mystery and adventure set at theater camp, where William Shakespeare and selfdiscovery take center stage, landed on bookshelves last month.
Thielke, now 34, moved to Houston with her family in 2000 and attended Lanier Middle School. “Twelfth,” written under the name Janet Key, is set in suburban Massachusetts, though the author’s experiences as a Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alum and self-professed former Theatre Under The Stars camp kid are deeply ingrained in her storytelling.
Maren stars as the book’s 12-year-old protagonist who isn’t completely sure #theatercamplife is for her. That shifts as Maren, her nonbinary bunkmate Theo and their fellow theater campers embark on a hunt for a missing diamond ring. Clues are sprinkled throughout Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and link to the camp’s namesake Charlotte Goodman, a fictional character from Hollywood’s mid-20thcentury blacklist era.
“It’s basically a mystery hidden inside a Shakespeare play,” Thielke says. “There are two storylines: the present is set in 2016 at theater camp; the past storyline is in the 1940s and 1950s.”
She presumed writing a children’s novel for 8 to 12 year olds would be simple; instead, the process took over her life. In a good way.
Thielke’s hardly new to the literary game. She earned a master’s degree from Vanderbilt University’s fiction program, where she served as editor-inchief of the Nashville Review. Her short stories have appeared in the New England Review, Bat City Review and Colorado Review, among others. She’s produced plays and taught writing workshops at her alma mater, University of Wisconsin, Col
gate University and Oberlin College, too.
“Twelfth” required her to work a different muscle. Thielke compares short stories to a fever — ideas come in and she writes them. A novel is more like a marathon. “It was open season on all of my memories,” she says.
Her personal inspirations, too. For example, Charlotte Cushman, a queer stage actress from the 1840s who became famous for performing male roles, was the subject of a report Thielke once wrote. The camp’s namesake and Cushman share a familiar ring, don’t they?
“One character is based on a friend I met when I was 12 who was the most wonderfully loud and excellent person who is unapologetically herself,” Thielke shares.
“Twelfth” isn’t entirely based on her life. She and Maren have key differences.
Thielke took far less convincing to fall in love with performing arts. She adored the role playing, costumes and dance performances. “I liked being taken seriously in this adult world, both behind the scenes, then being on the stage.”
As a theater major at HSPVA she began playwriting. There, she learned that creating a world was even more thrilling than existing in one. During her undergraduate studies at University of Southern California, Thielke transitioned into fiction and short stories.
She initially set out to pen “heavy, serious fiction”; then, a lightbulb went off. Why not write about the girl detective, treasure hunt, historic and theatrical-style stories she grew up reading?
“Gender diversity, let’s talk about it,” Thielke says. “I want readers to close this book feeling like they made their first nonbinary best friend.”
Middle-grade students, she explains, are at an age where they’re transitioning from accepting opinions from the people around them to making their own decisions in the world.
Thielke, who is cisgender, consulted with Legacy Community Health’s Jennifer Feldmann. An interview between the pair* is tucked in the novel.
She hopes young readers engage with Shakespeare with renewed engagement after “Twelfth,” too. Thielke references “Twelfth Night,” which at its introduction was considered subversive for its gender fluidity; several of the play’s characters dressed as women.
“I read ‘Macbeth’ alongside ‘Harry Potter’ on the same footing — they’re both page-turners,” she says before predicting that increased gender fluidity in fiction is the future. “I hope so many queer or feminist figures and moments in history are woven in. These are events that have been looked over or not given the attention they deserve.”