Treat your mother—hey, your whole family—to a free performance of the Mobile Unit’s “Twelfth Night,” directed by Saheem Ali at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.
The late, great Papp, who founded the Public Theater in 1954, was a visionary, without question, and had practiced diversity and inclusion from the very beginning. His passion still lives within the walls of the famed Public Theater, which has become, over the years, a launching place for some of the best in theater, including the iconic “Chorus Line” and the mega-successful “Hamilton.”
Even before the physical theater, Papp began the famed Mobile Unit in 1957 and received early support from New York City authorities. The first Mobile Unit rolled up to performance venues across the city in borrowed Department of Sanitation vehicles with a wooden folding stage mounted to a truck bed and portable seating risers to accommodate 700 people per venue. The city’s Parks Department permitted performances in local parks across all five boroughs.
To commemorate the anniversary of the Mobile Unit, for the first time the sit-down run of “Twelfth Night” will be performed at the Public Theater—free—running through Sunday, May 14. It opened April 27.
“Twelfth Night” is an adventurous tale about a young shipwrecked immigrant, Viola, who takes a chance on the “wet foot, dry foot” U.S. policy of the mid ’90s and washes up on the shore of glitzy Illyria, Fla. She finds herself a stranger in a fabulously strange new land. Thinking her twin brother has drowned, Viola throws herself into a new gig as assistant to Orsino, a wealthy Floridian with a serious case of love sickness for a wealthy lady, Olivia. Having disguised herself as a boy to become Orsino’s right hand man, Viola (now Cesario) is tasked with delivering his adoring valentines. But as Viola woos in her boss’s name, she falls head over spiky heels for the man himself, while Olivia turns her affections to the intriguing
Cesario.
Danaya Esperanza who plays Viola and Cesario in “Twelfth Night” shared the following:
AmNews: Why do you think Shakespeare is still popular?
Esperanza: I think that one of the biggest reasons that our audiences—at least so far on the road—have been so generous and open to us from the get-go is that we look like them. We’re not a mono-racial cast, and we also run the gamut of sexuality and gender and gender expression and fluidity. I think that’s very important. Theater is supposed to reflect life, and I think our cast does that pretty well: We reflect what life looks like in the city. The audience is also surrounding us. We come out and talk, we mingle before the show and after the show. And the audience also sees us around the space, even watching the show when we’re not in scenes. I feel that really adds to the life of the show because we are all a part of the communal event, the actors are partaking in it in the same way as our audiences, and I think this gives everyone freedom to really jump into the same world.
AmNews: What do you think William Shakespeare would think of Saheem Ali’s production of “Twelfth Night?”
Esperanza: I think that dear William would be absolutely thrilled to come see our production of Twelfth Night (where Viola and Sebastian are Cuban refugees). We’re doing what he wrote—he wrote a story about two immigrants in a new place who feel so lost that they must disguise themselves. They need that private time, in disguise, to mourn and to adapt. Shakespeare wrote about immigrants throughout his plays. He was interested in cultures other than his own—many of his characters don’t have “English” names—he was drawn in by the other. He was interested in the rest of the world in a way that many productions don’t give license to. Our production is definitely giving license to that and to his ever present exploration of human sexuality.
Visit www.publictheater.org for more information.