Spectacles des Finissants

About Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night is a complex weave of mistaken identities and gender confusion. In the mythical land of Illyria, Viola is in love with Orsino, who is in love with the beautiful lady Olivia, who is in love with Cesario, who just happens to be Viola, disguised as a male page. To complicate matters even more, Orsino is also quite fond of his page Cesario. And then, there is Viola's twin brother, Sebastian.

This ever-popular Shakespeare play, also known as What You Will, is usually staged as a light comedy. Going against the grain, Jason Byrne and his team of NTS 2013 graduating designers are considering the darker underpinnings of Twelfth Night.

Byrne always approaches the work he directs with a curiosity about what will be discovered in the rehearsal hall, even a Shakespeare play. "I have to investigate it and let it reveal itself to me," explains the director, who began work with the NTS cast of Twelfth Night using improvisation, as he does in any other process. "My impression of the writing is that it feels quite melancholy and tortured. Illyria is a kind of metaphor, a psychological purgatory where people remain in denial and refuse to move on," he suggests.

Jason Byrne was last at NTS in 2011 to work with 2nd year actors and directors. In December 2006, he also directed the 2007 graduating class in The Cherry Orchard on the main stage of the Monument-National.

About Jason Byrne, director

Jason Byrne is the Artistic Director of Loose Canon Theatre Company, founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1996. Loose Canon is not married to any one particular aesthetic. Each new work necessitates the discovery of an equally original aesthetic. What remains constant is a vision of theatre as something volatile and beautiful, which destroys itself even in the act of discovering and communicating its meaning. For Loose Canon, Jason has directed Julius Caesar, The Revenger's Tragedy, Measure For Measure, The Duchess of Malfi (3 adaptations), The Spanish Tragedy, Coriolanus (for which he received a Sunday Times "Spirit of Life" award), The White Devil, Hamlet, In The Dark Air Of A Closed Room (a wordless montage suggested by the paintings of Carravagio), Macbeth (winner of Best Production Dublin Fringe Festival), Hedda Gabler, Medea Material Landscape With Argonauts (Heiner Müller), Fragments Of A Dead Performance, H or When Hamlet dreamt of becoming Electra, The Maids (Genet), Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane (Winner of Best production Irish Times Theatre Awards), Anatomy Of A Seagull (after Chekov) and A Midsummer's Night Dream.

As a freelance director Jason Byrne has directed a critically acclaimed production of Tom Murphy's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard at the Shaw Festival, Living Quarters, A Month In The Country (Brian Friel), Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, and The Comedy Of Errors at Ireland's national Abbey Theatre, Not I, Piece of Monologue, What Where (Samuel Beckett), Wedding Day At The Cro-Magnons (Wajdi Mouawad) for Dublin's Bedrock Productions, Cosan Dearg (a dance performance) for Corp Feasa, and Festen for Toronto's Company Theatre.

The 2012-2013 season of public performances of the NTS graduating class is an excellent opportunity to catch future artists of the Canadian stage in action just before the beginning of their professional careers. Graduating actors, playwrights, directors, designers and production personnel work year round with professional guest directors to present a varied season that will hone the skills and talents of these new artists.