Video: “Twelfth Night” – classic Shakespeare by an all-female cast

Show dates:
Dec. 14-19, 7:30 p.m.
Dec. 21-23, 7:30 p.m.

Haligonia reporter Emma Ross talks with Director Mary-Colin Chisholm and cast member Martha Irving of "Twelfth Night".

This landmark production features a company of 11 professional women taking on Shakespeare’s classic tale of a ship-wrecked maiden who dresses up as boy, falls in love with a count who is in love with a countess who falls in love with the maiden who is dressed as a boy. Complicating this simple love-plot is a priggish servant who, himself, has designs upon the countess, and a gang of merry folk who delight in jesting, drinking and playing practical jokes. LunaSea has cast women in all the roles (including a very pregnant Alexis Milligan who is herself carrying a wee lass in keeping with the rest of the cast) to push the gender role-playing envelope and showcase the wealth of female talent we have here in Nova Scotia.

The stellar cast: Martha Irving, Mary Colin Chisholm, Gay Hauser, Amy Reitsma, Genevieve Steele, Alexis Milligan, Francine Deschepper, Stacy Smith, Vanessa Walton-Bone, Keelin Jack, Tingdzin Otro, Aislin Flynn

Directed and Adapted by: Mary Colin Chisholm
Stage Manager: Shani Hamilton Greenlaw
Assistant Director: Eric Benson
Costume Designer: Adam MacKinnon

“Twelfth Night” was traditionally staged during the Advent season and we are celebrating that timing by incorporating seasonal music into the production.

“Twelfth Night” is a perennial favorite, and with its multifaceted plot mixing sweetness, sadness and silliness it is also about as surefire as Shakespeare plays get. -New York Times