This was my first time seeing Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, 12th Night. For those of you who may not be familiar with the plot, the story follows separated twins, Sebastian and Viola. Following a shipwreck, Viola thinks Sebastian is dead, so she disguises herself as a man to serve the duke of Illyria, named Orsino. Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia, but Olivia falls for Viola, who is in disguise. Then Sebastian arrives in Illyria. Viola and Sebastian look identical, so the people in Illyria get massively confused. Some of the major themes of the play include the re-thinking of sexuality, nature of relationships, desire, revenge, and the fickleness of love. The play disrupts the boundaries of compulsory heterosexuality and flips societal norms upside down.

This is a play that has been produced thousands of times. I realized after seeing the play that the movie, She’s the Man, released in 2006, is a version of 12th Night. The characters are actually named Viola, Sebastian, Duke, etc. A girl disguises as her brother at a boarding school and love triangles form.

In the version of the play I saw, the director put a 1930s twist on the props, costumes, stage, choreography, and music. I loved the elegant pattern painted on the back wall and floor of the stage, as well as the gorgeous mural of mountains, forest, and the ocean. The costumes, down to the patterned socks and elaborate wigs were charming and drew me into the story.  

The choreography and blocking added a layer of humor. When Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek first saw each other after a long time, they had an elaborate handshake-dance-greeting that lasted almost five minutes. It was awkward and hilarious. Their characters added a lot of comedic relief to the play.

One of the most fascinating characters in the play to me was the fool, Feste. He pretended to be stupid but in reality, he was the only person who knew that Viola was a woman. His persona of being foolish allowed him to make comments that others could not get away with. The character made me think about the psychology of humor. In reality, it takes a lot of intelligence and skill to land a joke and entertain others. People also often laugh at things that pains or scares them. Therefore the nature of telling a joke is delicate. There is also a lot of power in making people laugh. When a person laughs, they let down their guard and are quite vulnerable. Thus, a level of trust is inevitably built between the joker and their audience.

Overall, I really enjoyed the play. I would encourage everyone to checkout the plays and musicals put on by U of M’s Department of Theater & Drama.

I loved the supportive environment and the intimate studio space of the showcase. It was so much fun to feed off of the dancers’ and audiences’ energy and be able to see classes show off what they have been working on throughout the semester. I also liked watching different dance genres being represented: ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, etc. The fact that a class would break up into smaller groups to perform and then come together as a whole in the end made their performances more dynamic and compelling.

One class (possibly modern or jazz) had everyone laying on the floor and they coordinated their movements to look like a ticking clock. Moments where dancers’ bodies pulsed in rhythm to other dancers’ hand movements were particularly captivating to watch. I thought the choreography was ingenious.

A different modern dance performance reminded me of Martha Graham’s dance style. She was an American modern dancer and choreographer known to pioneer the technique “contraction and release,” which is a stylized conception of breathing. A lot of her pieces remind me of someone who is held captive; the dancer usually appears constricted, like they are trying to escape from something. Their limbs may be twisted and they may jerk eerily in a certain direction. It is particularly emotional for me as an audience member to watch.

An observation I made between the dance genres is that because hip hop is naturally more upbeat, lively, and “energetic,” it actively engages the audience more so than say, ballet. During a hip hop dance performance, audience members as well as other dancers cheered and hollered to support the performers. Whereas when a ballet performance was happening, people were respectfully quiet. Perhaps this is because ballet is more “aloof” and austere, which requires a more passive involvement from the audience. Thus, the quality of the performance (in terms of the entertainment factor) relied more heavily on skillfully executed technique. That’s not to say that hip hop does not require technique; breaking and popping (as two examples of hip hop) require a tremendous amount of strength, control, and awareness of the body. But because hip hop originally took place on the streets and in interactive dance offs and breaking battles, dancers could also rely on other factors than technique to engage the audience.

The showcase overall reminded me of how much I love the fact that dance roots a person in their body. Whenever I dance, hearing the sound of my skin making contact with the floor, imagining the space around me and my body filling it—all these things connect me to the world in ways that other art forms cannot. Dance often reminds me that my posture and movements consciously and unconsciously convey my emotions, confidence, and thoughts. When I watched other people dance during the showcase, I could tell whether they trusted their partners just by the way they moved their shoulders when they fell.

I think for these reasons, dance is especially important for trauma survivors. When trauma occurs, dissociation happens between the person’s body and mind. Dance teaches people to be in their bodies again: to love their body, to own their movements, and to trust in themselves again as well as their dance partners.

Crowns is a unique musical because the music style focuses on gospel, with some hip-hop here and there, instead of traditional showtime theatre music. Also, the story/plot is not very cohesive and besides the main character, Yolanda, most characters backgrounds and personalities seem to be more representative of a group of people than individualistic of a unique person. Characters don’t interact with each other outside of an occasional reference or sly comment. The musical felt like story time, where each character would take their turn singing a story about their past to the audience. However, there was one character that was built up, idolized, discussed, personified, and was the focus of the musical– hats also referred to as crowns. Maybe that is the point, the people were props and hats is the character.

I enjoyed Yolanda’s opening hip hop song. When she mentioned her brother Teddy dying, the music died with Teddy, but her voice kept singing and remained strong. It showed that Yolanda lost a large part of her life, but she is going to stay tough and not let this tragedy stifle her voice.

The most spectacular part of this performance of crowns was the quality and power of the singing; even more so than the fancy hats and dresses worn by the cast. Velma, who was the one in a light purple dress, had a professional voice with intense resonance. She had most of the major singing roles and brought the house down every single time.

The musical was extremely comical. Mabel, who was the preacher’s wife, provided most of the comic relief. In the performance, Mabel did a fantastic job of having a big and exaggerated personality. I thought the funniest part of the musical was during the “hattitude” scene; hattitude is the ability to wear a hat well. The scene about never touching a women’s hat was also really funny because of the physical comedy. They showed how to hug in an obscure way and duck whenever hearing a sound from the back. It showed how delicately they treat their hats, like their hats are babies.

There was very strong imagery and prominent themes in this musical: materialism vs minimalism, isolation of our generation from our heritage and history, lonerism, duality (reveal and conceal). All of these themes were portrayed through hats.

Although he wasn’t a major character, I thought the preacher was phenomenal. He was actually my favorite actor. He spoke so charismatically and had an amazing voice that reminded me of John Legend. He played a big role in my favorite scene which was the baptism of Yolanda. I enjoyed that they used a blue blanket and had baby like movements for Yolanda. The scene was like a child being born, which is what a baptism is in a religious sense.

Personally, I wish there was more a cohesive story and that the characters had more interaction with each other. All the narratives explaining the importance of hats got a little tedious and tiresome. I believe that instead of literally saying the qualities and importance of hats through anecdotes, figurative stories and acting with subtle imagery of hats could have done a better job. I believe this would have made the hats feel more intimate to the characters and audience.

A truly fantastic job by Basement Arts. I cannot stress the quality of singing that was in this performance.