Playbill for the Venture Theatre\u27s production of William Shakespeare\u27s Twelfth Night, Assembly Hall, University of North Florida.https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/performances_print/1023/thumbnail.jp

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University of North Florida UNF Digital Commons Flyers, Playbills and Posters for Campus Performances UNF Events 2-1977 William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Venture Theatre Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/performances_print Recommended Citation Venture Theatre, "William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night" (1977). Flyers, Playbills and Posters for Campus Performances. 23. https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/performances_print/23 This Archival Material is brought to you for free and open access by the UNF Events at UNF Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Flyers, Playbills and Posters for Campus Performances by an authorized administrator of UNF Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Digital Projects. © 2-1977 All Rights Reserved Venture Theatre presents William Shakespeare's February 25&26, March 4&58:00 p.m., Assembly Hall University of North Florida Tickets: Fine Arts, 646-296077 Twelfth Night directed by Jane Elizabeth Decker Associate Director Set and Costume Design Choreography Original Music Mary Brumbaugh Meredith Normington Joyce Bizot, Trina Wharton William A. Brown The play takes place in I ll yria or Paris, in the 1890's or anytime Orsino, Duke of 11/yria Sebastian, brother of Viola THE CA S T Antonio, a sea captain, friend to Sebastian A Sea Captain, friend to Viola Valentine Curiogentlemen attending on the Duke Sir Toby Belch, uncle to Olivia Sir Andrew Aguecheek Malvolio, steward to Olivia Fabian ,servants to Olivia Feste, a clown Olivia, a countess Viola, sister of Sebastian Maria, Olivia's woman Duke's Attendants Olivia's Attendants Officers Priest Guitarist E. Allen Tilley James Tobi n Patrick Bidelman Patrick Bidelman Mark Gay Scott Emmons Bil l Caldwell Steve Downie Don Waccholz Joe Smyth Jill Rooney Kathleen Gay Dale Cliffo rd Margaret Fletcher Joyce Bizot Liz Kimsey Percy Parsons Susan M. Brumbaugh Barbara Waccholz All en Harre ll Percy Parsons Mark Gay Martha Ridgell Production Staff Assistant Director Technical Director and Stage Manager Assistant Technical Director Photography Publicity Consultants Technical Crews ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS : Trina Wharton Meredith Normington Conni Rayl Beldon S. Wall Trina Wharton Richard Bizot Dale Clifford E. Allen Tilley Ty Anderson Susie Brumbaugh Barbara Caldwell Frankie Faulk Percy Parsons Cleve Powell Conni Rayl Dee Stockton Gingiss Formal Wear; The Inexpensive Bow-Wow; Jacksonville Univer-sity; Elizabeth Taylor; The Tux Shop; UNF Bookstore, Department of Fine Arts, Instructional Communications, Physical Facilities, Purchas-ing, Security and Student Activities; Vagabond Travel Agency. Twelfth Night is sponsored by the UNF Council of the Arts with funds allocated by the Student Government Association. There will be one ten minute intermission. No smoking in the audi-torium please. The opening night audience is invited to a receptior sponsored by the Council of the Arts in the adjacent commons area. SHAKESPEARE AND TWELFTH NIGHT William Shakespeare, probably the greatest dramatist of all time, lived and worked in England between 1564 and 1616. He wrote some thirty-eight plays, although some number of those were in part by others; we still have them largely because his fellow actors published them in 1623 to preserve his memory. Shakespeare wove these plays on the basis of stories derived from a myriad of sources : mythology, legend, history, works of fiction and other plays. Shakespeare's critical reputation in his own time did not equal that of many other dramatists, particularly Ben Jonson, and his fame peaked only in the nineteenth century. What accounts for the endurance and quality of his work? One must mention first his great ability to use the English language; no other playwrite has consistently written as well, with such beauty, and such universality. Second, Shakespeare's plays appeal across time and space, not only because they are "well-written", but especially because of their continuing relevance, because they still reveal and comment upon individuals and the ways in which we do and do not interact with each other and the worlds in which we live. In Twelfth Night, for example, Shakespeare reveals two human worlds: the world of convention and pretense, filled with gaiety and lyricism; and the world of counter-convention and rebellion, marked by plots and trickery. Twelfth Night is surely a comedy and it is also about love, but it exposes two different worlds of comedy and love. The analogy with the 1890's could hardly miss a historian of modern Europe who had read the play. Written around 1600, Twelfth Night appeared at about the same time as As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing. A magnificent comedy, woven of plot and sub-plots, it contains many great comic characters and has long been popular with actors and audiences alike. This company received both great challenge and great enjoyment from Twelfth Night and we hope our audiences will too. Paris in the Belle Epoque In 1889 the Eiffel tower rose on the banks of the Seine in preparation for the Universal Exhibition celebrating the centennial of the Great Revolution, and Paris entered one of the most tumultuous decades of its history. We remember the 1890's as the belle epoque, the era of "elegant wits and grand horizontals", the Moulin Rouge and Maxim's, aristocrats in the Bois de Bologne and demi-mondaines in Montmartre. The 1890's have become a romanticized legend. At the time, it was more popular to view the era with pessimism. Paris entered a decade of transition and tension between traditional life and culture and a rebellion against conventional politics, art and social arrangements. Contemporaries often called the period the fin de siec/e because they believed that traditional culture and civilization were dying with the last ten years of the old century. The 1890's witnessed great social unrest, literal and figurative brawls over politics, anarchists and bombs, political extremists and threats of coups d'etat. An intensely creative period in which modern art was born, the era gave birth to many public controversies in the arts. Many artists, writers, poets and journalists supported anarchists and rad icals calling for a complete social transformation. One British author, writing in the early 1970's has likened the era to our own : "Then, as now, there was widespread disillusion with the political system- especially among the young. Frustrated youthful idealists and fanatics tried their hand at urban guerilla warfare and urged the overthrow of the established social order; there were bomb-throwings, street demonstrations, manifestoes and riots; there was much talk of a gap or a conflict between the generations, and the hippies and drop-outs of today had their counterparts among the young people of the Lating Quarter of the Nineties and in the audiences who flocked to Paris's nonconformist, experimental theatres and listened to poetry in cafes and cellars. Then, as now, there was a large 'underground' press; there was an equiva-lent of psychedelic art, a revival of interest in occultism, mysticism and spiritualism, with attempts to create artificial paradises of the mind through the use of certain drugs. In the young Paris of the Nineties, there was much uncertainty about the future, a reaction against conventional bourgeois attitudes towards life and culture, and a proliferation of groups and 'isms'. The 1890's in Paris were also a period of serious high purposefulness and idealism which contrasted strongly with the frivolty and 'decadence' which gave the decade such a lurid glamour ... It was a time of passionately expressed ideas and experi-ments, of extreme preciosity and deliberate eccen-tricity as the young and creative demanded the right to think, behave, write and make art as individuals. Then as now, many of the more extreme attitudes assumed and assertions of the individual against society sprang from deep fears that humanity and the individual personality would be crushed or mande anonymous by the mass structures of society and scientific development." (Raymond Rudorff, Belle Epoque. London, 1972.) Art and Music in the 1890's Artists and intellectuals of the 1890's challenged not only the structure of society but the foundations and traditions of "art". Conventional painting, like conventional sculpture and architecture of the period. is little remem-bered today. To be good, a painting had to be realistic, picturesque, drama-tic and preferably narrative; subject matter ranged from historical and mili-tary scenes to sentimental representations of domestic life. This "official" or "Salon" art was thought to embody the essence and the mountain top of French art destined to contir1ue forever unchanged. Yet it is the fertile creative geniuses of modern art who struggled against the closed circle of official art to explore new modes of expression that we remember: Gaugin, Van Gogh, Serusier, Bonnard, Rousseau, Redon, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, Picasso. Poster art reached a heyday in the 1890's and colored the streets of Paris; many of the most famous modern artists of the period experimented with the medium. One of the most famous poster artists was Alphonse Mucha, remembered most frequently as the designer of posters for the celebrated actress Sara Bernhardt. Mucha's works are also often cited as examples of the style known as art nouveau, with its undulating, energy-laden asym-metrical lines, which so strongly influenced the popular and applied arts. Flowers and women with long, wavy hair dominate art nouveau as in our set which is a replica of Mucha's "Four Flowers". Rebellion against the conventional and the static permeated and grew in all the arts. Symbolist poets like Mallarme or Verlaine and those with a style all their own like Apollinaire, musicians like Satie and Debussy or singers like Aristide Bruant and dancers like loie Fuller and playwrites like Alfred Jarry all rebelled against convention, experimented with new artistic forms and struggled toward new modes of self-expression. The cast of Twelfth Night attempts to recreate some of these artists and intellectuals of the 1890's. We have gathered together, as they did then in cafes, cellars, night clubs and experimental theatres, to share our experiences and our works with each other and to entertain ourselves and you with a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Our music is by Debussy, Satie, Ravel, Poulenc and Chabrier. Our costumes attempt to replicate the poster art of Mucha, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec. -J. Decker FORTHCOMING COUNCIL OF THE ART EVENTS Art Exhibit, Marilyn Taylor, potter Art Exhibit, William Henderson Arts Festival '77 UNF Chorus UNF library Feb. 28-March 18, 1977 UNF library March 28-April 15, 1977 Civic Auditorium April 21, 1977 l This public document was printed at a costpro-gram information for the VENTURE THEATREproduction of TWELFTH NIGHT

William Shakespeare\u27s Twelfth Night

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William Shakespeare\u27s Twelfth Night

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