Metaverse Shakespeare Company’s 2010 Main Canon: Twelfth Night, Act 2 – Preview Season
Ina Centaur
– Preview Season
Shakespeare, Second Life—March 2, 2010—The Metaverse Shakespeare
Company (MSC), formerly SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC), today opens its
Preview Season, exclusively to the MSC inworld group and affiliates.
The repertoire features its 2010 Main Canon production of Twelfth
Night, Act 2 in an open-ended run to occur every Tuesday at 6 PM SLT,
and every Sunday at 1 PM SLT. Set to occur at the 4-sim SL Globe
Theatre, the performance continues the troupe’s 2009 production of
Twelfth Night, Act 1—but, with a fresher, riper take, and its own
amalgam of the year’s innovations in virtual theatre.
This Open-Ended run of Twelfth Night, Act 2, like Act 1, is based on
archetypes, grounded in the play’s intrinsic elements, such as
character relationships, set in a world that is pre-modernity, and
yet, says Artistic Director Ina Centaur, the topsy-turvy nature of the
play and the era of its creation comes through, “Even though this
production is set in the ‘generic past’, there’s still plenty of
Elizabethan notions and bawdry… There’s the presentation of
class-crossing as a ridicule-prone absurdity and the visual portrayal
of that heavily-cozy-explicit language—with a wild bit where a
drunk-betimes Sir Toby Belch urinates live on-stage to “[fill] an
unfill’d can (II.iii).” Says Centaur on the music of Twelfth Night and
the spirit of the open-ended run, “I’ve composed my own little tune
for Feste’s Song to Orsino in Scene 4, which will actually only be
sung in select shows—but you can find its sheet music on the
mShakespeare blog... For most shows, we’re sticking with an orthodox
interpretation and traditional songs, drawn from the era before and
Shakespeare’s contemporaries. But, this being an open-ended run, be
braced for variations, and character metamorphosis—in both act and
appearance.”
While this will be the troupe’s first production under its new name of
Metaverse Shakespeare Company, Centaur asserts that the production
continues to uphold the company’s founding ideals in developing this
nascent field of virtual theatre, “As with every Main Canon
production, we apply new technologies to virtual theatre. For Twelfth
Night, Act 2, our three technological innovations include the usage of
physics, moving automatons, and visual illusion on the virtual stage.
You’ll see physics on-stage, in both built-in and scripted forms in
our apple catches in Scene 3, and wilting rose motif in Scene 4—and,
in the crawlspace of Scene 3, you’d see prim-based automaton actors in
the form of rats!”
Special to this production, the MSC introduces the concept of
“crowdsourced interactive set design,” which allows anyone to submit a
graffiti message or poster/flyer idea to be plastered onto the “City
Wall of Illyria” set in Act 2, Scene 1. More details at
http://bit.ly/illyriangraffiti
The live show, presented via SL Voice, is also available in
closed-captioning with opera-style subtitles in English, Esperanto,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.
Starting March 2, shows occur
Tuesdays at 6PM SLT (PT)
Sundays at 1 PM SLT (PT)
only at the SL Globe Theatre at Shakespeare (255,255,25)
About Twelfth Night, Act 2
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a dynamic story with plentiful songs
and bawdry topsy-turviness. On one hand it’s the story of a
shipwrecked girl named Viola, whose choice to go incognito as a boy
eunuch results in myriad complications—including a gender-bending love
triangle. On another, it chronicles the fallacious rise and tragic
fall of a Puritanical steward named Malvolio, who becomes a victim of
his too-lofty dream. Act 2 sets the basics for his downfall—his
dysfunctional relationship with the other servants provokes a
practical joke involving a certain forged letter, that would
eventually ruin him.
About the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (mShakespeare)
Headquartered in the virtual world of Second Life (SL), the Metaverse
Shakespeare Company (MSC) is the flagship project of sLiterary’s
Virtual Reality Shakespeare Initiative (VRSI). MSC is a professional
virtual theatre company that embraces the best of what the metaverse
has to offer. While it is primarily known to provide quality live
Shakespearean theatre available to anyone in any location, MSC is also
the curator of the most historically accurate theatres and
architecture in virtual worlds relating to William Shakespeare.
Website: http://mshakespeare.com
Press Center: http://mshakespeare.com/press
Blog: http://blog.mshakespeare.com
Playbills: http://playbills.mshakespeare.com
Programmes: http://programmes.mshakespeare.com
About sLiterary
sLiterary, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering
literary and artistic endeavors in Second Life and other virtual
worlds.
About Second Life
Second Life is a free online virtual world imagined and created by its
residents.
Neither the SL Shakespeare Company nor sLiterary is affiliated with
Linden Lab. Second Life is a trademark of Linden Lab. No infringement
is intended.