"Conceal me what I am..." (On "Twelfth Night")

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. 

- Twelfth Night, I.ii

As I mentioned above, I am participating in Ian Doescher's Shakespeare 2020 Project, and the first play was Twelfth Night. Written somewhere around 1601 or 1602, the play is largely considered the last of Shakespeare's real comedies before he moves into his more mature "problem play" era.* It relies heavily upon established tropes of the time - mistaken identities, master/servant protocols, marriage as a happy ending, and - most notably - cross-dressing and gender confusion.

The play begins, of course, with the shipwreck of Viola and Sebastian upon the foreign shore of Illyria, a country which seems to be undergoing some sort of revel for the three-month period over which the play is set. The twins are separated, and both assume the other dead. Immediately Viola begins dressing as a man and feigns the name "Cesario" to take up employment under the local duke, Orsino.

Viola has been played by a host of actresses in our modern era, with directors setting the stage from Regency England to the Edwardian era, to fantasy scenery, and beyond. Costuming-wise, however, almost all productions feature Viola's "Cesario" scenes with her in some type of uniform. Take the most famous recent film production from 1996. Here, Imogen Stubbs plays Viola, in a version set in what appears to be turn-of-the-century England. Stubbs' Viola/Cesario is dressed in military costume.

In 2009, similarly, Anne Hathaway played Viola in New York's Shakespeare in the Park, with similar effect, this time as a Regency-era soldier, seen here with Raúl Esparza.

Even the 2006 modernization of the play, "She's the Man," has Amanda Bynes in a private school dress jacket (left.)

Lest you think this is merely a modern affectation, even the earlier versions of the play feature its actresses in the uniform of servant's livery. See below, with Vivien Leigh as Viola (with Trader Faulkner as Sebastian) in 1955 at Stratford, or Judi Dench in 1969 at the Royal Shakespeare Company (those boots with the crenellated tops!! *dies*)

What does it say about us as a society that the most "masculine" form of dress, or the one that most clearly indicates "male-ness," is that of a standardized uniform? The very word implies "sameness." Of course, the audience does need some sort of visual indication of the difference between Viola-as-woman and Viola-as-Cesario. But why no other options than that of a uniform?

At first glance, in a modern play setting, this seems sort of straightforward - young woman disguises herself as young man. But any historian knows that women were not allowed upon the stage in Shakespeare's day, which means that Viola would have been played by a man; in fact, most likely she would have been played by a boy old enough to appear like a young woman, but young enough for his voice not to have dropped yet. This means that Viola would have actually been a young man playing a woman playing a young man. Modern productions often skip over this difficulty altogether.

One does not, however. A production I would sacrifice my left kneecap to have seen live is the 2012 Globe Theatre's version, directed by Tim Carroll and and starring Mark Rylance as Olivia and Johnny Flynn as Viola. Costume designer Jenny Tiramani won a Tony award for her designs, as she strove to create the most historically-accurate costumes possible for the production. Star Mark Rylance wore period-correct stays which he claimed limited his range of motion** and developed a particular floating walk which emphasized the almost legless, alien quality of the character of Olivia. You can see Tiramini's designs and Rylance's movement within them here and here.*** Her designs were not the only historical accuracy: as in Shakespeare's day, director Carroll chose to cast all male actors, forcing his audience to avoid the mental shortcuts available to other productions. What does this do to us as we consider gender within the contexts of the play?

What is most immediately striking is how the costuming highlights the ambivalence of gender in the 2012 production. If we allow our modern perceptions of masculinity to intrude upon them, the dress of the male characters of "Twelfth Night" seem downright effeminate. The lace and frills of Liam Brennan's Orsino and the powder and gilt of Flynn's Viola/Cesario leap out at us as surely belonging to more feminine characters, while Olivia's stark black mourning and stillness fall more in line with the (male) uniform of modern productions.

Without our modern sensibilities getting in the way, the production is forced to rely on the words of the playwright, the skills of the actors, and the range of historical knowledge of the audience. By all accounts, it was an immensely successful performance, and a tribute to how close attention to historical detail does not need to be pedantic or peevish - it can, indeed, contribute to the themes of a play.

Not to leave out our other two ladies, let's just check in with Maria, the scheming, petite little "firago" servant of Olivia's. She, too, would have been played by a young boy, and lines in the play suggest that she would have been depicted by a younger one than Viola or Olivia, since she is often described as petite or small. Paul Chahidi played her on the Globe's stage in 2012.

Other versions of Olivia are more typical of the "leading lady," but this blog post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Bonham-Carter's lustrous fragility, or Kara Tointon's 2017 RSC version, set in Victorian England, which allows it to use all those carefully-coded messages involved in corsetry and bustles and hair all bound up or loosely flowing.

Next up: Henry VI, Part 1!
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* Doescher scheduled it first, despite its late date, so that it would coincide with the actual date of the twelfth night of Christmas, January 6. Nevertheless, the play itself doesn't seem to refer to any Christmastide activities, and takes place over a period of three months. Anne Barton's excellent introduction in the Riverside Shakespeare provides an overview of the best scholarship we currently have regarding the title's intent, as well as the play's first performance date.

** To this, I add a bit of a "harrumph," as they, frankly, shouldn't. Stays and corsets, properly fitted, shouldn't limit movement or breathe in any way. However, as an actor who is accustomed to breathing in a particular fashion, or who wishes to add drama to an interview, I'll allow it.

*** I have to admit, my first experience with this costume was actually costumer Zack Pinsent's interpretation of it from earlier this year. I came across this video, which initially was mistakenly labeled by its sharer as being a costumer on a hoverboard. While a unique concept, and one I would be interested in seeing, it's not what's happening here, though it's easy to see why a casual viewer would believe it. Neither Rylance nor Pinsent are on hoverboards - they are just immensely talented body movement artists: Zack Pinsent as Olivia.

2020: Ready Is a Lie

I don't like the concept of resolutions. They imply that the past version of you wasn't "enough" somehow. Not working hard enough, didn't have enough willpower, wasn't smart enough, not making enough of the right decisions... To resolve to be different in the new year means that Past You wasn't good enough. But really, Past You made the best decisions that she could with the resources and knowledge that she had at the time.

But goals? That's something I can get behind. And since I'm hitting the "restart" button on my life, I have been given the rare gift of time and opportunity to set goals that are truly meaningful to me. For the next two years, I hope to grow into myself in ways that were never allowed until now, for various reasons ranging from the expectations and needs of others, to my own perfectionist inner narrative. This blog will hopefully serve as a form of accountability to these goals, and a way to communicate progress towards them. It will also serve as a journal of sorts, a semi-regular dialogue of one woman's journey towards rediscovering herself and her talents and abilities in an effort to unlearn what does not serve and share that growth with the world.

Without further ado, those goals are:

• Scholarship and Career Change: I've already submitted my application for my second master's degree, this time in Arts Leadership. I hope to move from education into the world of the arts, and use my skillset to help make the arts accessible and inviting to all. (It's a two-year program, hence my two-year plan here.)
• Write: Everyday, write something of substance. (The blog doesn't count, as it's personal reflection.) My intent is to hopefully create some sort of funding out of my writing skills, which have been developed over a decade of secondary humanities studies (and, admittedly, the intermittent internet argument.) Whether this be writing nonfiction articles for Medium or other outlets, or adding pages to my first novel, my intent is to produce 500 words a day, 5 days a week, for the first few months, and then hopefully raise it to 1000 if that is working for me.
• Sew: I've done a fair share of historical costuming since 2009, but almost everything I've created has been completed with restrictions as to time period, needs of a specific event, etc. I hope to begin sewing again with two distinct goals in mind:
1. Learn more techniques: So far, I've acquired information on the fly, learning how to sew specific methods as they became necessary for that particular project. While I expect to continue in this way somewhat, I plan to choose projects that stretch my skills and allow me to learn a range of techniques that raise my overall level of craft.
2. Create art: I hope to create not just copies or interpretations of existing or historical garments, but to meld art and costume and create new designs that express ideas.
• Read: I've always read a ton, so this isn't a change, but rather a commitment to making sure that I am not just picking up the next book that looks interesting, but ensuring that my reading shelf remains broad and deep. 
• Additionally, I intend to follow along with Ian Doescher's 2020 Shakespeare Project, which reads through every work of Shakespeare's throughout the 2020 year. Every work takes from four to eight days to complete, so it's a brisk pace until you've got free time, but I read Renaissance era writings pretty quickly (yay humanities master's degree!) and I want to brush up on some of my Shakespeare. I've read probably two thirds of his plays at some point or another, but never in order, and I've missed too many along the way. If you're interested in joining me, let me know! I'd love to share thoughts about the plays.
• Body Work: I'm covering a few things under this heading, but this mostly includes a deeper commitment to dance, particularly West Coast Swing, as well as a daily commitment to yoga and meditation. This is for two reasons:
1. First, to keep my body healthy, I will need to just plain get off my butt. I don't think I need to elaborate on the host of health benefits to regular exercise.
2. Second, yoga and meditation in particular have clinically shown benefits to PTSD survivors in calming the nervous system. As a survivor of emotional abuse from multiple points in my life, I am working to overcome my body's trained reaction to triggers, and this is one method of doing so. 

This doesn't include work on my personal life, as I'm not quite sure how to set goals for that other than "keep being honest" and "show up for your people." It also doesn't include work around my house, though I have some distinct goals there, and progress on that might show up here, too.

My first struggle will, I am sure, be an intense battle with ADHD and the fact that there are a million fun things to do around my house that don't involve thought or work. I mean, my bed alone is the warmest, comfiest thing on the planet, and that's before I get three kitties piled on top of me. So dealing with being accountable to myself is somewhat of a goal all on its own, but it's one where I just have to to show up and do the work. (Ha! Just show up and do the work, she says!)

Which brings me to my title: "Ready is a lie."

I was never going to be ready for this. 2018 ground me down to dust, I thought, but it made me stronger than I ever thought I could be. I learned to stand up for myself. Learning that, in turn, meant that I had to break some more things in 2019, things that weren't happy for this newer, stronger version of me. Nobody's ever ready for change. Change is hard. But ready is a lie. If you wait until you or someone else is ready, you will moulder in the ground before you ever enact any kind of change. So I'm not ready for this. But I'm going to do it anyway.