Twelfth Night

 I have an interesting history with Twelfth Night.  More specifically, I have a bit of a cursed history playing Malvolio.  Macbeth may be the cursed play, but for me, it has always been playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

The first time I played the role was with Greenstage in Seattle.  I did a lot of work with them, and I met some of the best people there.  I really cut my teeth as an actor working in Seattle with Greenstage and the Bathhouse.  The first audition I had when I moved to Seattle was with them, and got cast as Lysander in "Midsummer."  I really fell in love with the company and worked with them pretty much every year that I lived there.  When I was cast as Malvolio, it was for a summer in the parks by a director who had played him in an indoor venue.  He would have continued to play the role himself, but he got cast in an Equity show.  I was delighted to take it on, because he was not only a great director, but one of the finest actors I have ever worked with.  His Malvolio was full of fun and condescension.  But he gave me freedom to make the role my own.  Not only had I enjoyed his Malvolio, but I had seen Antony Sher play it in Stratford-upon-Avon ten years earlier.  I was actually really enamored of the work of Roger Allam who played a roguish Toby after also seeing him portray Brutus in a matinee of Julius Caesar.  But Sher's performance also stuck with me.  

And the show went well, for the most part.  People seemed to love it.  I got high praise for my Malvolio.  Until the closing night party.  When the director told me that he didn't really appreciate what Sir Toby and I had worked out for the final moment of the play.  And, mind you, we toured many parks over the summer and the show kept growing.  Well, my friend Ken and I were screwing around backstage sometimes, he was Sir Toby.  And he was wearing a a bandage across his head (his bloody coxcomb) and jokingly, I would press on it and he would feign pain.  Just dumb actor stuff backstage to pass the time.  Well, as the final act was staged, Toby and Maria came onstage right after Malvolio's declaration to Olivia that she had done him wrong. And the cast gave them a big hand when it was announced that they had been married because of the jest.  Malvolio says:  "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you."  and storms off.  And one day (because we performed under the sun) Ken swaggered up to me as Toby when I said that, and in the moment, I reached up and pressed his "wound."  And he reacted in pain.  And the audience howled.  I realized then that the audience really needed to be let off the hook.  Not only was Malvolio kept in a dark house, but in our production, I had a bucket on my head and was shackled hand and foot and was spun around and beaten to indicate how bad Malvolio was tortured.  It was pretty extreme.  My mom said she almost couldn't take it.  Anyway, from that point (which was probably half way through the tour) until the end, Ken and I continued to perform the last scene that way.  Never a word from the stage manager or the director when he saw it.  We felt like we had solved the major problem with the play.  Which is the treatment of Malvolio.  And done it in such a way that allowed the audience to still dislike Malvolio enough to forgive the beatings.  But the director decided to tell me that he didn't appreciate it after the close.  I was shocked.  When he did the role indoors, he solved it by coming out at curtain call and pulling the plug causing the lights to go out.  I really thought that we had come up with a similar solve under the sun.  Looking back on it all these years later, I imagine that it was ego that made him say something.  Which I never would have thought coming from him.  He was such a brilliant actor.  But I think he hated that I found that moment. But I had never done anything but please my directors in my whole life.  I was devastated to learn that somebody I admired so much felt I had betrayed him and his vision.  

The next time I played Malvolio was a few years later.  I had just moved to LA, and was working at a restaurant.  One of my fellow servers told me she had just been cast as Viola.  When I said that I had played Malvolio, she told me to go audition because they were still looking for Malvolio.  And so I went.  I was a different person at this point.  My first marriage was falling apart.  I had just recovered from having a kidney removed and just moved to LA to not kill myself.  I went through a very dark time my last year in Seattle.  New Years Eve 1997, I decided that I would either finally kill myself or just start all over.  I chose the latter.  I moved down here with nothing except that I worked for a company that had a restaurant here.  So, my audition for Malvolio was a little darker than what I had played before.  I got cast.  And for the most part, I worked with a wonderful group of actors.  The gentleman playing Feste, however, decided to torture me.  Not just onstage, but off.  He told me on the first day of rehearsal that because our characters were enemies, that we were too.  What is a real shame is that his boyfriend played Toby and was amazing and kind and talented.  Turns out he had gone to ASF.  This was well before I ever thought about grad school.  And may he rest in peace.  He was a good man.  His lover, on the other hand, did everything he could to torture me.  He accused me of hiding his props (which, c'mon, you know I would never do) and when another actor admitted to moving it accidentally never apologized.  He got under my skin. I was separated from my wife, healing from a gaping wound in my side, trying to stay on the life side of suicide and I finally snapped during tech.  We were doing the drunken singing scene with the fool, Toby, Maria, and Andrew. And I was admonishing them  for their drunken late night singing when he rushed me from behind (not part of our blocking) and I turned around and shoved him back.  I yelled, "fucking stop it!"  We finished the run without further incident, but I told the co-directors that I was done.  I told them that I would open the show the following weekend, but they needed to replace me.  Eventually we were put in a room together with Robert and the directors and hashed it out.  There was an uneasy armistice reached.  But I was twitchy the entire run.  Also, one performance my yellow tights were missing because the costumer forgot them.  Luckily I was able to find some gold wrapping paper in the venue and somehow managed to make that work.  Maybe worst of all was that the gal who played Viola, at our cast party told me that I had no balls because I couldn't get over my marriage ending.  This hurt me because I had a bit of a crush on her, but also because I was holding on by a fucking thread through that whole production.

The last time I played Malvolio, I almost quit acting.  This is touchy because I am friends with everybody who was involved in that production and the director.  But it had to do with the final moment of the play after I say "I will be revenged on the whole pack of you!" The woman playing Maria, along with the director decided that it would be funny to have Maria make a karate move and scream "Hi-yah!"  This wasn't something that happened in rehearsal.  It wasn't something that we played around with backstage.  It was sprung on me during a performance.  And maybe I'm too sensitive to play Malvolio.  The moment at which he is his most vulnerable and human and the only time he speaks verse in the entire play is his accusation of Olivia.  To have my final moment stomped on by such an anachronistic and offensive moment really pissed me off.  It pissed me off more when I found out that the director was behind it.  And I had to eat shit during that last moment for the rest of the summer because they refused to back off it.  I decided that I was going to quit acting, but I was in an acting class and were doing a Chekhov showcase just after our closing.  I had been studying with Jack Stehlin for a few months, and what he was teaching is what acting really should be.  Fortunately, I was working with Jack and Kata and had met real artists who worked the same way that I always wanted to work. And I was pulled back in to theatre when I was nearly done.

I auditioned for Twelfth Night again about ten years ago and I told them I'd play any part except Malvolio.  I was cast as Orsino and had a splendid summer.  

So, I just recorded a zoom reading of Twelfth Night.  In which I play Malvolio.  And I would like to let you all know that the curse is over.  Not only was it a joy, but the fog of this past year has lifted.  I don't know how much of that to attribute to the reading.  But for many months now, I have been silently praying to a god I don't believe in to let me simply not wake up tomorrow.  I will never end my life by my own hands now that I have children.  But I have been in so much physical and emotional pain for the last 10 months that I have been really hoping that it was all ending.  I feel like I have finally made it through the long-haul COVID symptoms I've had since March.  I'm managing my intestinal problems. And my creativity and artistry have once again been awakened.  So, the whole thing I meant to write in this blog is that I'm going to be ok.  And it took a huge detour talking about Twelfth Night.