TWELFTH NIGHT, David Geffen School of Drama (2026)

DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean

Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean Nancy Yao, Assistant Dean of Student Life

PRESENTS

Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare

Adapted by Amanda Whiteley and Timothy Hartel

Directed by Amanda Whiteley

cast creative team

Scenic Designer

Kiki Gordon

Costume Designer

Caleb Krieg

Lighting Designer

Alex Vásquez Dheming

Original Music and Sound Designer

Emilee Biles

Projection Designer

Jasmine Williams

Choreographer

Andrew Rodriguez

Production Dramaturg

Timothy Hartel

Technical Director

Forrest Rumbaugh

Fight and Intimacy Directors

Kelsey Rainwater

Michael Rossmy

Stage Manager

Whitney Renell Roy

Malvolio

Lolade Agunbiade

Sir Andrew/Antonio/Captain/ Priest/Curio

Kieron J. Anthony

Duke Orsino

Shawn Bowers

Feste/Sebastian

Jack Kelley

Viola

Nancy Kimball

Olivia

Rebecca Rivera

Sir Toby Belch

Erik Manuel Robles

Maria Olamide Oladeji

Citizens of Illyria

Francesca Pan

Ángela Sofía Caro

Percussion

LT Taylor

Violin/Officer

Maya Miro Johnson

content and atmospheric guidance

This production includes fog, haze, strobe and flashing lights, and the use of diffusers with natural and artificial scents (cypress, seaweed, vetiver).

setting: Illyria.

Twelfth Night is performed without an intermission.

This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

artistic

Projection Design Advisor

Ke Xu 许可

Projection Content

Creators

Nathaniel Britton

Jasmine Williams

Assistant Sound

Designer and Engineer

Skylar Linker

Assistant Stage Managers

Ángela Sofía Caro

Miranda Vazquez

production

Associate Production Manager

Allie Posner

Assistant Technical Director

Emma Alderman

Production Electrician

Bekka Broyles

Projection Engineer

Steph Lo 盧胤沂

Projection Programmer

Sarah Webb

Projection Content Creator

Nathaniel Britton

Associate Safety Advisors

Mae Mironer

Forrest Rumbaugh

Run Crew

Tess Cruz

Carter Sundown King

Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦

Francesca Pan

Sarah Webb

Mingmei Zhou

administration

Associate Managing Director

Iyanna Huffington Whitney

Assistant Managing Director

Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann

Management Assistants

Chanel Johnson

Maya Simon

House Manager

Mithra Seyedi

Production Photographer

Maza Rey

David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

special thanks

Acme Lighting

Front illustration by Katrien De Blauwer; design by Kiki Gordon.

Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.

The Shakespeare Repertory Projects are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.

THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND , established by Peggy Cowles ’65, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.

Hungry as the Sea

Twelfth Night, or What You Will—like many of William Shakespeare’s greatest plays—defies the narrow confines of genre. In this respect, the play—likely written close to its first performance in 1601—bears some similarity to the play that precedes it, Hamlet

If Twelfth Night largely wears the comic mask, the tragic one remains near at hand to surprise the audience—as we see in the heart-wrenching scene post-shipwreck and in the violence that bubbles up in the play’s final act. While certainly among Shakespeare’s funniest works, Twelfth Night is nonetheless at times seized by tragic currents, just as the twins Viola and Sebastian are at the play’s beginning.

Their ship headed from Messaline (likely a misremembered Messina, the ancient city on Sicily’s northern coast) crashes on the shores of Illyria (the historically pirate-infested area of what’s now Albania). Today, ships are a relatively safe and stable means of transport, moving goods from continent to continent in our elaborate system of global trade. Shipping at the end of 16thcentury was an entirely different—and much more dangerous—story.

Looking at sources from across Elizabethan England in his book Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea, David Cressy estimates the chance of shipwreck for each voyage being roughly five percent. Each time a boat set sail in Shakespeare’s day there was a onein-twenty chance of disaster. It’s no surprise then with what frequency these catastrophes appear in his plays: The Tempest, Othello, The Comedy of Errors, and The Winter’s Tale. Fortunes were made and lost in the high-stakes gamble of Elizabethan sailing. For our twins in Twelfth Night, it at first appears that they’ve lost everything, including each other.

But even shipwrecks are opportunities. In his article “The Politics of Shipwreck in Early Elizabethan England,” Cressy explains that “shipwrecks were disasters for merchants and mariners, but opportunities for people on shore,” as coastal residents and officials “watched for foundering ships, and sought to profit from their cargoes, fittings, and the personal effects of sailors.” A horrible accident can prove to be an enormous boon...from the right perspective. And while the twins may be carrying little of value, Viola and Sebastian are themselves what Illyria needs.

Illyria is in disorder. Duke Orsino lusts after Countess Olivia, who has refused him, swearing off all company following the death of her brother. Neither household is happy; so, these twins could be the lovers to set things right with the nobles. But will they survive the complications of disguise and mistaken identity? In the immortal words of Viola: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”

—Timothy Hartel, Production Dramaturg