For the next Stage II production of the semester, Micah Grace Gilley, student director and acting fifth year senior, is putting on a production of Shakespeare’s play “Cymbeline,” with a few twists.
The show follows a young princess, “Imogen,” through her romantic adventures of trying to find love while avoiding the attempts of her stepmother to marry Imogen off to her son, “Cloten.”
“I think it’s full of juicy characters and real relationships,” Gilley said. “The text is beautiful; it’s just a perfect picture of what it’s like to be human, but it can be hard to understand sometimes because our world is so much different than when this was written.”
Gilley and her cast and crew are taking some of the original characters and playing around with the gender of the characters.
“This show sees Shakespeare write female characters that are incredibly nuanced,” Gilley said. “In this show we also gender-bent a lot of characters, with women playing characters that were originally male who we changed to female, and even some female actresses playing traditionally male characters while keeping the male pronouns. It’s cool because we didn’t just try to stick to one thing. I wanted actors to feel like they could really just get into their characters and just let them feel out who they were in this world that we are creating.”
Deanna Cooper, acting sophomore and the “Queen” in the show, said she is excited for where Gilley is taking the script and how it is all coming together.
“Micah is really taking this show and doing some interesting and cool things with it,” Cooper said.
Cooper also said she has very specific hopes for what audience members take away from the show after seeing it.
“I really hope that audiences take away that this show is about love and family and relationships and just really find a way to connect with it,” Cooper said.
One obstacle the show faced was coming up with costumes that really brought the show and the characters together with their very limited budget. Cooper and Gilley both said all of the wardrobe came from the cast working with what they owned.
“There was a day where I told all of the cast to bring together whatever clothes they had in specific colors, and we were all just in a room for an hour trying on clothes to create the right look and feel for the show,” Gilley said. “I think the costume aspect came together so beautifully considering our limitations.”
Gilley also said the lighting has had a major impact on the show.
“The lighting throughout the show, with the help of my amazing lighting director, just really makes it feel like you are watching a movie,” Gilley said.
The show will be performed Nov. 7-10 in the Blackbox Theatre. Tickets can be purchased either in person at the OCU Box Office located in the Gaylord Center or online.
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