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Twelfth Night
Student notes
Cheek By Jowl at the Barbican
2006 marks the first year of a three year
collaboration between the Barbican and
Cheek by Jowl. Each year BITE will coproduce a new English language
production and invite a production created
by Cheek by Jowl’s sister company based
in Moscow.
TWELFTH NIGHT is the first of these Russian
pieces to come to the Barbican.
Cheek By Jowl
2006 also marks Cheek by Jowl’s 25th
anniversary. Formed in 1981 by Declan
Donnellan and Nick Ormerod the
company’s manifesto was to re-examine
the classical texts, avoiding directorial and
design concepts, and to focus on the actor’s
art. Focussing on both British and
international classics, the Company’s style
became distinct for their fusion of vivid
storytelling, music and song.
Landmark Cheek by Jowl productions
include LADY BETTY, MEASURE FOR
MEASURE, THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, MUCH
ADO ABOUT NOTHING and AS YOU LIKE IT.
For more detailed information on the
company please go to
www.cheekbyjowl.com
Cheek by Jowl’s Russian work
A chance meeting in Helsinki with Lev
Dodin, artistic director of the Maly Theatre
in St Petersburg, who regularly perform in
BITE and who will return this November
with KING LEAR, led to the first of Declan
Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s award
winning Russian collaborations with a
production of THE WINTER’S TALE by
Shakespeare staged with the Maly Theatre
and their ensemble of actors.
Having also toured Cheek by Jowl’s English
Language productions to Russia, in 2000
Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod were
invited by the Chekhov International
Festival to create a new work with a
specially created ensemble of actors from
across different Moscow theatres. BORIS
GUDONOV by Pushkin was followed in
2003 by this production of TWELFTH
NIGHT.
In Russia Declan Donnellan and Nick
Ormerod both work thought interpreters.
However, they describe the process as
being the same in many ways to their work
with English and French actors - Declan
Donnellan directed LE CID in French for the
Avignon Festival in 1998.
Cheek by Jowl’s rehearsal
and production process
Declan Donnellan believes that ‘the art of
the theatre is the art of the actor.’ Cheek by
Jowl productions normally rehearse for
between 6 and 7 weeks. Director Declan
Donnellan does not come to the start of
rehearsals with ideas to impose on a cast
of actors, rather Cheek by Jowl productions
grow organically out of the rehearsal
process. Similarly Designer, Nick Ormerod,
fits his designs to the actors. Rather than
presenting the actors with a model of a set
design at the start of rehearsals, the set is
designed in the rehearsal room during the
rehearsal process.
First Performance of Twelfth Night
Until 1599, Shakespeare and the company
of actors he wrote for, the Chamberlain’s
Men, had no permanent home in London.
Then in that year they created for
themselves the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
Shakespeare was 35, at the height of his
career.
Cheek by Jowl is a touring company. As
well as the company’s London home at the
Barbican, the company’s work tours
internationally. Since its launch the
company has performed in 305 cities in
over 40 countries, spanning 5 continents.
The earliest surviving record of a
performance of TWELFTH NIGHT appears
in the diary of a law student, John
Manningham, who saw the show at the
Middle Temple in February 1602, and was
particularly taken by the plot to trick
Malvolio into wearing yellow stockings.
TWELFTH NIGHT has performed as far a
field as Sydney and Bogota, Moscow and
New York. Unusually, Declan Donnellan
and Nick Ormerod continue working on a
production throughout a tour, rehearsing
and refining the show throughout its
touring life.
Around 1601 he wrote TWELFTH NIGHT. To
put this into context, approximate though
the dating is of plays from that period,
scholars agree that Henry V and MUCH
ADO ABOUT NOTHING were written in
1598, ASYOU LIKE IT in 1599 and HAMLET in
1600.
This was probably not the first production
of the play, however, and the title has
prompted some scholars to argue that it
was commissioned for performance on
January 6th, the Christian feast of the
Epiphany. So it is also possible that the title
refers to epiphanies, for its characters, who
experience in the course of the play lifechanging revelations about love. However,
the play’s subtitle, OR, WHAT YOU WILL
mischievously undermines certainty about
the title’s meaning.
The Father of Twins
Shakespeare was himself the father of
twins, Judith and Hamnet, born in Stratford
in 1585. About five years later,
Shakespeare began to make a name for
himself as an actor and playwright in
London.
Further Reading:
Around 1592, when his children would have
been seven years old, he wrote A COMEDY
OF ERRORS, choosing to exploit the comic
potential of a seemingly tragic situation in
which one half of identical twins fears the
other has been lost at sea. To increase the
confusion of identities, he created two sets
of twins who are mistaken for each other,
and he brilliantly engineered the resulting
chaos for purely comic effect.
www.cheekbyjowl.com
But in August 1596 Hamnet, his only son
and heir, died at the age of eleven.
The plot device of separated twins,
employed so exuberantly at the beginning
of his career, reappeared in 1601 in
TWELFTH NIGHT, but now it carried dark
undertones of the essential loneliness at
the heart of love.
Declan Donnellan
The Actor and the Target
Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevstova
50 Key Theatre Directors
Barbican Theatre
13 14 16 16 17 June
In Russian with English surtitles
‘Magical darkness and light, the dualities
of good and evil, and the possibilities of
transvestism all explored with
hummingbird wit and precision. It is the
funniest of Twelfth Nights.’ The Guardian
Biographies
Declan Donnellan
Nick Ormerod
Declan Donnellan is joint Artistic Director of
Cheek by Jowl.
Nick Ormerod is joint Artistic Director of
Cheek by Jowl.
As Associate Director of the National
Theatre, his productions included FUENTE
OVEJUNA by Lope de Vega, SWEENEY
TODD by Stephen Sondheim, THE
MANDATE by Nikolai Erdman and both
parts of ANGELS IN AMERICA by Tony
Kushner.
He trained at Wimbledon School of Art and
has designed all but one of Cheek by
Jowl’s productions.
For the Royal Shakespeare Company he
has directed THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL,
KING LEAR (as the first director of the RSC
Academy) and GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
He has directed LE CID by Corneille in
French, for the Avignon Festival, FALSTAFF
by Verdi for the Salzburg Festival and
ROMEO AND JULIET for the Bolshoi Ballet,
Moscow, becoming the first UK stage
director to work with the Bolshoi (and the
first stage director to work with the
company since 1938). Other work in Russia
includes THE WINTER’S TALE for the Maly
Theatre of St Petersburg,
In 2000 he and Nick Ormerod (joint Artistic
Director of Cheek by Jowl) formed a
company of actors in Moscow, whose
productions include; BORIS GODUNOV,
TWELFTH NIGHT and THREE SISTERS.
His book, THE ACTOR AND THE TARGET,
originally purblished in Russian has since
been published in French, Russian,
Spanish, Romanian and its second English
edition was published in October 2005.
He has received awards in London, Paris,
and New York, including the Olivier for
Outstanding Achievement and is a
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Design work in Russia includes; THE
WINTER’S TALE (Maly Theatre of St
Petersburg), BORIS GODUNOV, TWELFTH
NIGHT and THREE SISTERS (with Cheek by
Jowl’s sister company in Moscow formed
by the Russian Theatre Confederation). In
2003 he designed his first ballet, ROMEO
AND JULIET for the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow.
He has designed FALSTAFF (Salzburg
Festival), THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY
OF MAHAGONNY (English National
Opera), MARTIN GUERRE (Prince Edward
Theatre), ANTIGONE (Old Vic Theatre), HAY
FEVER (Savoy Theatre) and THE SCHOOL
FOR SCANDAL (RSC).
He also co-adapted and designed Dickens’
GREAT EXPECTATIONS for the Royal
Shakespeare Company.