PRODUCTION Page Twelfth [Di shier ye]
Data Type:production background
Author:Meetei, Chongtham Jayanta
Title:Director's Notes
Source:My Dinner with Shakespeare Performance Program
Place:Taipei
Publisher:The Party Theatre Group [Tongdang jutuan]
Date:2005/4
Pages:3
Language:English
Abstract:In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare solves the problem of gender identity cleverly by introducing Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian. In Page Twelfth, the actress, also facing a gender/relationship conflict, finds out her solution as she rehearses for Twelfth Night and compares Shakespeare’s text to her own situation.

Page Twelfth is inspired by William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. Today the whole world is dealing with gender crisis, relationships between man and man or woman with woman, and those people go through that relation always have dilemma in their life. In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Olivia falls in love with Viola, in the year of 1600; Shakespeare solved this problem cleverly by introducing Sebastian, a twin brother of Viola. Today, in 2005, the actress tries to find out her own method to solve her personal gender relationship conflict. Page Twelfth starts with an actress preparing her rehearsal of cleaning the floor. During the preparation, her personal memory merged to her conscience. She plays Viola with Shakespeare’s original lines. Viola’s lines started to affect unconsciously to the actress. She drops the character and starts to deal with her own conflict with comparing Shakespeare’s text. At last she also finds out her own way to solve her conflict.