Carleton’s theater department puts on Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’

Known for its dynamic cast of characters, poignant themes, and classic Shakespearean tropes, Twelfth Night had audiences on the edges of their seats at Carleton this spring. There truly was something for everyone; from live jazz music to stage combat sequences to dramatic monologues, director Andrew Carlson ’99, associate professor of theater and chair of theater and dance, provided a fresh interpretation of an already well-known play. Most impressively, due to Carleton’s fast-paced trimester system, the show was up-and-running after less than six weeks of rehearsal time.

“It’s a really short time frame, actually, to put on a show of that scale,” Carlson said. “Our first day of rehearsal was March 31, the first day of spring term, which is about five-and-a-half weeks.”

It was during these five-and-a-half weeks that the theater department also coordinated with Carleton’s English and music departments, bridging the gap between disciplines.

“What we’re really trying to do with English and certainly with music,” Carlson said, “is to expand the mission of the Weitz… We have all of these arts in this one building. How do we collaborate? How do we get music and theater and everybody involved?”

Wanting to integrate New Orleans-style music into the play, Carlson had approached Laura Caviani, director of Carleton’s jazz program and senior lecturer in jazz piano, to lead the band and create the music score that was woven throughout the play. Alongside the incorporation of music, Carlson worked with Pierre Hecker, associate professor of English, on the study of Twelfth Night in a classroom setting. Within Hecker’s class, students investigated questions pertaining to the play’s historical, social, and theatrical contexts, culminating in a variety of unique individual and group projects.

This was not the first time both departments worked together. In 2023, Carlson and Hecker worked on Much Ado About Nothing, and they plan on continuing this theater and English collaboration in a few years.

It was this cross-departmental collaboration that made Twelfth Night so special. Audience members were greeted by the live band in the Weitz commons, drawn in by the analytical short essays in the playbill written by Hecker’s students, and captivated by the spectacular performances of the actors. 

“I think [for Carleton students], and for everyone, it’s great to have those reminders — even fictional reminders — that what we do impacts others,” Carlson said. “When we work together toward common goals, we can achieve something fantastic.”

Concluding each night with celebratory confetti, Twelfth Night certainly was something fantastic. Serving as a space where the broader Northfield community could join with the Carleton community, it demonstrated how theater not only brings people together, but can also be used to celebrate both differences and similarities; it gives people the space to find themselves and their place within the world around them.

“Theater is an escape, but it’s an escape to a form of truth,” Carlson said. “Theater itself for young people — the act of doing it — transforms us and allows us to discover ourselves, to grow into ourselves, to learn who we want to be and who we can be, to experience some of those feelings and those joys, and to practice all of those emotions in a place that is fun and collaborative.”

Looking to the future, Carlson hopes that this same sort of collaboration will be recurring at Carleton.

“We’re hoping this was the beginning of a longstanding collaboration between music and theater and English and dance, too,” Carlson said. “While theater and dance are housed under one departmental roof, sometimes they [can be] pretty separate.”

Because Twelfth Night itself was essentially a musical, with the addition of songs that the royal jester character, Feste, sings, Carlson looks at it as a “building block” toward future projects, hopefully in the form of musical theater at Carleton. Though, regardless of what the project is, theater will always have a resounding impact on those working on it and its audiences.

“It’s pretty irrational to spend 25 hours a week at Carleton working on a production when you have all these other things [you could or even should be doing],” Carlson said. “Creating irrational acts of art is a hard thing to do. But in some ways, it can be the most important thing we do, especially when we are able to share that with the community.”