UIC Theatre sets ‘Twelfth Night’ on 20th-century island
Left to right: Patrick Agada, Joel Collins, Mark Pontarelli, Tanous El Kareh, Emily Woods. Photo: Michael Brosilow (Click on image for larger file.)
The UIC Theatre production of “Twelfth Night” is set “in the Caribbean or Central America, a hundred years or so ago,” says Shakespearean director/actor/scholar Rob Clare.
WHAT:
The UIC Theatre presents “Twelfth Night” by William Shakespeare, directed by Rob Clare, U.K.-based Shakespeare specialist.
WHEN:
Nov. 15, 16, 21, 22, 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Nov. 17, 20, 24 at 2 p.m.
Nov. 19 at noon
WHERE:
UIC Theatre
1044 W. Harrison St.
DETAILS:
The play begins with the shipwrecked Viola, who disguises herself as a man named Cesario and unwittingly begins a chain of misbegotten love triangles, complicated by the fact that her twin brother went missing in the shipwreck.
“Twelfth Night” celebrates lowbrow bawdiness combined with highbrow wit. Director Rob Clare calls it “perhaps the darkest and most complex of Shakespeare’s comedies, a play of love, loss, mistaken identity, and actual as well as emotional shipwreck.” Shakespeare set the story in the fictional Balkan seaboard state of Illyria, which he described in other works as the home of notorious pirates. UIC brings the play closer to home, but the characters remain timeless as they struggle to make sense of emotional chaos.
About the director: Rob Clare trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester before serving as staff director at the National Theatre. As associate artistic director of Compass Theatre, he directed national tours of “Amadeus” with Tim Pigott-Smith and a prisons tour of “Comedians” with Rufus Sewell. Since completing a doctorate at Oxford University in approaches to acting Shakespeare, he has become an internationally recognized specialist. Last summer, he co-directed “Henry IV” for the Marin Shakespeare Company. He soon will work on “Hamlet” with the Royal Shakespeare Company ensemble. He is artistic director of Kestrel Theatre Company, working within the U.K. criminal justice system.
Tickets to all productions are $16 for the general public, $14 for UIC faculty and staff, and $11 for UIC students. To order, call (312) 996-2939.
