Actor Sir Ian McKellen will be leading a production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night, or What You Will” featuring an exclusively trans and non-binary cast.
Trans What You Will Theater will produce the play, which opens on July 25 in London, England.
“Twelfth Night is perhaps the funniest and most moving of Shakespeare’s plays,” McKellen said. “This is achieved through the complexity of gender and sexuality from first to last. I’m really looking forward to the impact of this latest version of the play at The Space. I hope to see you there!”
According to Daily Wire, actress Phoebe Kemp commented on the play, and this particular production:
“Twelfth Night already toys with gender and performance — it feels like Shakespeare wrote it for us. This reading is about joy, solidarity and showing what’s possible when trans and nonbinary artists are at the center of the story,” Kemp said.
What McKellen claims is “complexity of gender,” concerns not the characters themselves but their circumstances and decisions to act temporarily as the opposite sex to achieve certain goals.
For instance, one of “Twelfth Night’s” main characters, Viola, early in the play decides to act as a male page named Cesario in order to help the Duke Orsino become a suitor of the Countess Olivia, who is mourning the death of her brother and won’t consider marriage for seven years, nor entertain any male guests with a similar agenda. Olivia happens to fall in love for a time with Viola’s Cesario, not knowing this is a woman.
There is no contemporary transgender narrative to “Twelfth Night,” and to assume that Shakespeare wrote it for people who would attempt to physically alter their gender and become the opposite is to impose a false revisionist meaning on the play.
According to Trans What You Will, “this production makes [“Twelfth Night’s” alleged] queerness explicit, reclaiming the story through the lived experiences of trans and nonbinary artists.”
