Directors Notes

My many collaborations with colleagues and students have been the source of my greatest joy, during my thirty-four years teaching Theatre and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. My first Shakespeare production at UNH, The Comedy of Errors, was directed in partnership with my colleagues and dear friends Doug Tilton and the late Susan Goldin. Today’s production is directed in partnership with Julia Sommer, who is at the beginning of her magnificent career.

For many reasons, my final show had to be Twelfth Night. Though I love the work of many playwrights, my first love in the arts is reserved for Shakespeare's comedies--and of these, Twelfth Night is the most nearly perfect. Indeed, many students of drama who know more than I argue that Twelfth Night is the most nearly perfect work in any form the human imagination has yet conceived.

The play has everything. Like all Shakespeare's comedies, it is a laugh riot. It is our dear hope that this production will give the audience at least some of the play's cleansing laughter. Some of Shakespeare's most heart stopping and heartbreaking verse is in this play. And in scenes as fine as any Shakespeare wrote, the play elicits in its audience a sense of wonder. A great while ago I published a book called Laughter, Pain and Wonder. I revisit that book in this production. Important as Twelfth Night is to me personally, it is even more important with our offering of this play to observe--perhaps to celebrate--our fragile return to live theatre during this fragile time. This comedy is nothing if not evanescent: laughter changes to violence, grief and horror become joy, even in a minute. And there is no certainty that even the joy will last.

"The rain it raineth every day."
"Even so quickly may one catch the plague."

Shakespeare and his audience knew these truths well, and now we know these truths too. Our difficult paths through this time of plague make us, I hope, a fit audience for this finest of comedies.

-- David Richman