Ian McKellen Will Open All-Trans Production of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Most Trans Play
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A trans theater company is staging a production of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies this summer in London, and the play will receive an introduction from none other than Sir Ian McKellen.
Trans What You Will, which is dedicated to staging Shakespeare plays with trans and nonbinary performers, will produce a staged reading of Twelfth Night at The Space in London on July 25. In a post to Instagram, the theater company wrote that the “inherent queerness” of the play is “glaringly apparent to so many.” Like many of the Bard’s plays, Twelfth Night absolutely smacks of gender.
As Trans What You Will describes it, “you’ve got a lady disguised as a man, seducing another lady on behalf of a lord, but nothing goes to plan when the lady falls for the disguised lady, and the disguised lady falls for the lord!” More specifically, the play follows two twins, Viola and Sebastian, who are separated from each other in a shipwreck. Viola disguises herself as a man, Cesario, and enters into the service of Duke Orsino, who rules over the area. As Cesario, she also serves as wingman to Orsino, who’s in love with the Countess Olivia. But Olivia falls in love with “Cesario,” Viola falls in love with Orsino, and chaos ensues. (I mean, sounds like your average T4T friend group if you ask us.)
The theater company also announced McKellen as the production’s “special guest” on Wednesday. In a statement posted to Trans What You Will’s Instagram, McKellen called Twelfth Night “perhaps the funniest and most moving of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“This is achieved through the complexity of gender and sexuality from first to last,” he said, adding that he’s “really looking forward to the impact of this latest version of the play at The Space.”
If you can’t get to London to watch the event live, you will be able to watch a livestream of the production, though there aren’t any further details about the livestream at the moment. Additionally, Trans What You Will is crowdfunding for production costs, and any profit generated will be donated to the U.K.-based charity organization Not a Phase.
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