Twelfth Night Performance Essay.

Authors Avatar

Anna Tichonova

Text & Performance

Twelfth Night Performance Essay

Word count: …………..

O n e  N i g h t

        We have chosen a scene from Twelfth Night, Act 2 Scene 3, where Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are sitting at night drinking as Feste, the fool, enters.   It is not a turning point in the play and does not contain much value context wise; however, it was a great opportunity for both high and low humor. The scene concentrates a lot of the personality of the characters and the process of making this performance gave me the ability to understand these characters in more depth and thereby see the play at a wider angle. Even though it was a rather short abstract, we were able to combine many musical and action elements together. Because there was little action and Shakespeare never gives many stage directions, it was very important to concentrate on the language and look at the meaning of the words and combine them with the character’s personalities.  

        It took us lots of time to decide upon the use of stage and the placement of actors. The scene itself is very flexible, mostly because the characters are drunk, and therefore we had the possibility to choose to have as much or as little movement as we felt was needed. The decision was made to place the main action in the center stage and have a very plain setting by using only two chairs. In the beginning a table was also a part of the set; however, during the process we realized that it had no actual purpose and only took up the useful space, therefore the setting was simplified and gave me more freedom to move.

Join now!

        I was playing the Feste and had to move around lots, therefore blocking had to be done very carefully. It was important for me to separate myself from the other two characters not only intellectually, but also through my actions and position on stage, and I found it a little difficult not to upstage myself or the other characters.  However, as I walk upstage and sang directly to the audience, I was able to find a correct spot, where I did not block the other two actors. Unfortunately, at the end of the scene when Toby and Andrew stood up ...

This is a preview of the whole essay