Twelfth Night

Notes from the Director

Welcome to “Twelfth Night or What you Will” on the balmy island of Illyria located in the turquoise blue waters of the Caribbean. It is the 1860’s and rebellions are in the air.   It is the beginning of the end of Spain’s rule in the Caribbean during a time that armed black and white men were united together to form the world’s first race-less nation.

The first 50 years of the 1800’s were a period of political and military turmoil in Spain, a combination that eventually brought about the collapse of its empire.
Since 1796, Spain had been in alliance with post-revolutionary France, an alliance that brought it into conflict with England. England won the right to rule the international sea-lanes after winning sea battles against France and Spain. This interrupted Spain’s trade and communication with the islands, leading to important changes for the Spanish-speaking world of the Americas. The revolutionary fervor of Simon Bolivar began to spill over all the Spanish colonies, eventually leading to revolutions and “gritos” (cries or yells) of independence. Slavery was slowly being abolished. In the West Indies, Haiti had won its revolution. Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba, inspired by Haiti’s win, began their struggle for independence. In Cuba, on October 10, 1868, led initially by a handful of prosperous white men, the revolution placed free men of color in local positions of authority. It also freed slaves, made them soldiers, and called them citizens. The movement created on that day went on to produce three full-fledged anti-colonial rebellions over the thirty years that followed: the Ten Year War (1868-78),  Little War (1879-80), and the final War of Independence (1895-98), which ended with the Spanish-American War. An army unique in the history of the world waged the rebellions, a multiracial fighting force that was integrated at all ranks. Espoused by white, mulatto, and black members of the movement’s civilian and military branches, it asserted that the very struggle against Spain had transformed Cuba into a land where there were “no whites nor blacks, but only Cubans.” It condemned racism not as an infraction against individual citizens but as a sin against the life of the would-be nation. Revolutionary rhetoric made racial slavery and racial division concomitant with Spanish colonialism.

In this world of coffee and sugar plantations and government sanctioned piracy, a revolution emerging from that slave society makes the story of Cuban independence a remarkable and compelling one. While elsewhere in the world philosophers and theorists were dividing the world into superior and inferior races, the Cuban movement’s principal intellectual leader, José Marti, professed the equality of all races. Indeed, he went further, boldly asserting that there was no such thing as race. Race, he and other nationalists insisted, was merely a tool used locally to divide the anti-colonial effort and globally by men who invented “textbook races” in order to justify expansion and empire. Here, then, were voices raised not only in opposition to Spanish rule but also in opposition to the prevailing common sense of their time. This is the world I would like to welcome you to.  Where the blue ocean surrounds an island. The sun is always shining. The Gods have created a not too perfect world. But it is a brief respite from the turmoil of the world. And not all is written in the cards. Where the unknown future could be glorious.  Where love is sought. Where the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

- Wilma Bonet

Bios

• Wilma Bonet (Director)
  • is an accomplished actor, playwright, teacher and director. Her directing credits include Vieques by Jorge Gonzalez, Drive My Coche by Roy Conboy, La Posada Magica by Octavio Solis for Teatro Visión, and The Mandrake for ACT’s MFA Program, as well as Brigadista by Tanya Shaffer through Larger than Life Productions.

    Her one-person play, Good Grief Lolita!, which toured in the Bay Area and the Southwest, has been published in Puro Teatro: A Latina Anthology. Ms. Bonet was a collective member of the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe (1980-86) with which she taught Commedia dell’Arte techniques and toured the United States, Canada, Europe and parts of Latin America. She also has over 25 years of teaching experience, including serving as a CAC Artist-in-Residence at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts for 4 year and at the East Institute of the Urban Arts in Oakland, where she taught acting and play writing for 3 summers.

    As an actor, Ms. Bonet has been seen with all the major Bay Area theatres: American Conservatory Theatre, San Jose Rep, San Jose Stage Company, TheareWorks, California Shakesepare Festival, Magic Theatre, Thick Description, El Teatro Campesino and Berkeley Repertory Theatre as well as Teatro Visión and Latina Theatre Lab. Her television and film credits include What Dreams May Come, 8MM, Underwraps, Jack, Radio Flyer and “Nash Bridges.”

• Erin Blackwell (Andrew Aguecheek)
  • has a theater degree from Université de Paris III, has studied with Stella Adler, and stage-managed Charles Ludlam. Co-writer on the Mime Troupe's 2005 summer show, Ms. Blackwell teaches a 10-Minute Play CLINIC to raise playwrights' theatrical space-time consciousness. She's developing an evening of short plays about torture, Cruel & Unusual.
• Samantha Chanse (Feste)
  • Since moving to the Bay Area in 2001, Ms. Chanse has acted and sketch comedy shows primarily with the Asian American Theater Company (AATC) and Bindlestiff Studio, where she was a resident writer and performer. She performs standup comedy in and around the Bay Area at venues including The Purple Onion, Kimball's East, Punchline Comedy Club (SF), Cobb's Comedy Club, and Locus Arts. As a playwright, her most recent work includes a 2005 production of her full-length play Sleeper (A Chronicle of the Return of the Remarkable), with AATC and Bindlestiff Studio; co-writing & co-producing Pipe Dreams and Paper Trails at Bindlestiff; and having a 2006 staged reading of her one-act, “Havana Haven,” at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She was a member of the 2005 - 2006 Playground Writer's Pool, was a member playwright of Asian American Theater Company's Incubator program, and has had the good fortune to be a student of Jeannie Barroga, Philip Gotanda, Octavio Solis, and Dijana Milosevic. She is currently the program director of SF-based arts nonprofit Kearny Street Workshop and co-director of also SF-based arts nonprofit Locus Arts.
• Tamar Cohn (Sir Toby Belch)
  • has acted with many North Bay theatre companies: Alternative Theater Ensemble, Pacific Alliance Stage Company, Ross Valley Players, Marin Classic Theatre, Novato Theatre Company, and others, and at the Phoenix in San Francisco. Recent roles include Alberta in Brian Thorstenson’s Drop, Agnes in Dancing at Lughnasa,Grandma Kurnitz in Lost in Yonkers, and multiple parts in The Dining Room and A Streetcar Named Desire. Ms. Cohn has performed new works by Bay Area playwrights, and is now delighted to take on Shakespeare with Woman’s Will.
• Iris Diaz (Maria)
  • recently appeared in August Wilson’s Fences at the College of Marin. At Teatro Visión in San Jose, she appeared in Luis Santeiro’s The Lady from Havana, Maria Irene Fornes’s, Fefu and her Friends, and Jorge Gonzalez’s Vieques. Ms. Diaz makes her Woman’s Will and Shakespeare debut with this performance.  She is a graduate of the Philip Bennett Theatre Lab, in San Francisco.
• Elissa Dunn (Sebastian)
  • is pleased to be returning to Women's Will after having played Lady Anne in last summer's production of Richard III. Her previous credits include Anna in Closer with Artattck with Theatre Ensemble, Ashland OR, Catherine in Proof, Maid in Man with a Load of Mischief, Second Nun in The House of Blue Leaves, Fritzi in Cabaret, and others with Southern Oregon University. Ms. Dunn graduated in 2004 with a BFA in Theatre at Southern Oregon.
• Jodi Feder (Viola)
  • moved to San Francisco after receiving her BFA in Acting at Emerson College in Boston. Since her move, she has kept busy acting with Berkeley Reperatory Theater, San Francisco Shakespeare Company, A Traveling Jewish Theater, Crowded Fire, Shotgun Players, The New Conservatory Theater, and other Bay
    Area companies.  Past Shakespeare credits include Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Ariel (The Tempest), Julia (Two Gentleman of Verona), and Hero (Much Ado About Nothing).  Recently, Ms. Feder made her big screen debut as Gina Chambers in The Zodiac.
• Christine Macomber (Malvolio)
  • returned to singing and performance several years ago after a career as a manager with the Social Security Administration.  That is when she discovered musical theater; Twelfth Night is the first play for her.  Ms. Macomber has sung the “old dame” roles with Lamplighters over the last five years: her favorites are Lady Jane in Patience, Dame Carruthers in Yeoman of the Guard, Katisha in Mikado, Dresser in Enter the Guardsman and Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe.  She has performed with Pocket Opera, and with San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon in productions of Minnie’s Boys, Roberta, Miss Liberty, and Fifty Million Frenchmen, for which she won a Dean Goodman Choice Award.  Ms. Macomber is a violinist and a member of The Exeter String Quartet.
• Leontyne Mbele-Mbong (Orsino)
  • is delighted to be returning to Woman's Will after a stint last summer in Richard III as the Duke of Buckingham. She was recently seen as Paulette in World Music with TheatreFirst and in Lamplighters' Show Boat as Queenie. Other favorite roles include Juliet, Mistress Quickly, Fefu in Fefu and her Friends, Elaine le Fanu in Map of the World, and a vast array of singing Gilbert and Sullivan maidens.
• Lisa Patten (Fabian)
  • has appeared in numerous musical, comedy and dramatic roles, both in Boston and the Bay Area, including several Shakespeare productions: Midsummer Night's Dream, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing.  She has written and performed original solo works, and was a member of Liquid Soap— a long-form improvisational theater company.  Ms. Patten trained in Boston, with the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard, San Francisco's ACT Summer Training Congress, and with Ann Galjour, Ellen Sebastian Chang and Bobby Weinapple, among others.  Her most recent credits include Under Milkwood and Heavy Days with Berkeley's Shotgun Players.
• Camelia Pee Poespowidjojo (Antonio/ Curio/ Olivia's servant)
  • is a recent graduate of the University of San Diego's Theatre Arts Program. Ms. Pee Poespowidjojo specializes in stage combat, although she is also pursuing directing and producing. Next fall she will be attending UC Irvine's MFA Acting program. Her favorite roles include Arcadia's Lady Croom, Desdemona in Goodnight Desdemona's and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, as well as an ensemble role in 4.48 Psychosis. Camelia hopes to explore musical theatre and film acting in the near future.
• Acquenetta Summers-Wong (Olivia)
  • is excited to be performing with Woman’s Will for the first time.  She was most recently seen in Teatro Visión production of Eduardo Machado’s The Cook as Rosa. Her past credits include Fefu and her Friends (Cecilia), Beyond the Tracks, Women and Wallace, A Raisin in the Sun (Beneatha), and Grapes of Wrath. She was also a member of San Jose State’s Touring Company.  Ms. Summers-Wong played the part of CiCi, in BRAVA!’s production of CiCi’s Fire. She has also performed with the Tabia Theatre Company in their productions of From the Mississippi Delta and Women Behind Walls.
• Tammy Berlin (Costume Design)
  • is delighted to be working with Woman’s Will again. She is a company member of Central Works and the resident costumer for Theatrefirst. She has also designed shows for OPT, Second Wind, Wilde Irish and Barely Human Dance Co. Ms. Berlin hails from Chicago where she was the Artistic Director of Transient Theatre and Heroes Inc. Ensemble, and the Managing Director of The Playwrites Center.
• Cassie Powell (Juliet)
  • has been thriving in the Bay Area Theatre scene for the past five years working with: No Nude Men, Custom Made, Thunderbird, and Killing My Lobster. Other Shakespeare credits include: Cordelia in King Lear at CCSF, Laertes in Hamlet, and Rosalind in Love's Labours Lost, both with NNM. In front of the camera Cassie played Lise in Lynn Hershmann's Strange Culture, a critical hit at Sundance Film Festival, and starred in United Way's "Bridging Communities" television commercial and print campaign.
• Kate Boyd (Scenic Designer)
  • designs scenery and lighting in the Bay Area. Recent productions include: Long Christmas Ride Home at Magic Theatre,Spittin’ the Raft at Marin Theater; Blue Orange at Aurora Theater, and Becoming Memories for Center Repertory. At Harbor Theater she has designed scenery for Wonder of the World, Sonnets for a New Century and Three Sisters; Nickel and Dimed for Theaterworks and BRAVA!; Sex Habits of American Women, First Love, Schrodinger’s Girlfriend and Summertime; ; Sockdology, and Sacco and Vanzetti at Marin Theater Company; and Culture Clash and Stopkiss for BRAVA! Ms. Boyd teaches design and was a recipient of the Gerbode Design Fellowship with the Working Women Festival.
• Carla Pantoja (Fight Choreographer)
  • Ms. Pantoja is happy to return as fight choreographer for Woman’s Will again! She recently choreographed fights for Killing My Lobster, Palo Alto Players, Teatro Visión, S.F. Shakespeare Midnight Shakespeare program, as well as countless school productions in the Bay Area.  She enjoys teaching children the joys of beating each other up without getting hurt and is a member of the Society of American Fight Directors and Theatre Bay Area. Ms. Pantoja received her training though the British Academy of Stage & Screen Combat, Academy of the Sword, and Action Actors Society.
    

Multimedia

Photos

L-R Jodi Feder and Leontyne Mbele-Mbong in Woman's Will's Twelfth Night playing in Bay Area parks, July 8 - August 13.

Photo: Erin Merritt

Press

• San Francisco Chronicle
• East Bay Express