Twelfth Night publicity photos

OK, so, not to deflect attention from Uncle Vanya (which has two weeks left to its run and is absolutely wonderful) but we've got our publicity photos for Twelfth Night back, and they're positively scintillating. I know that's a corny word, but it's the best one I can find to describe this shoot. Normally, I have very mixed feelings about publicity shoots. They usually take place too early in the rehearsal process for the actors to have the feel for their parts necessary to project onto a still shot. And these are actors, after all, not models.They have tools besides their faces and bodies--they have gestures and voices and all sorts of other tricks that don't necessarily transfer well to the inherently still life of photography.

But we've been trying harder here in the Cal Shakes Marketing Lab, trying to think outside the rehearsal hall. For Vanya, we trundled the actors off the the train tracks behind the office. And for the Twelfth Night shoot, I borrowed my neighbor's disco ball and we spirited Dana Green (Olivia), Alex Morf (Viola/Cesario/Sebastian), and Stephen Barker Turner (Orsino) away to my favorite after-work juke joint, that elegantly neighborhood dive known as The Missouri Lounge.


Here's Olivia with her Cesario.


















Orsino and Cesario. This shot reminds me of one I've seen of Mick Jagger and Mikhail Baryshnikov at Studio 54 (from Anthony Haden-Guest's The Last Party).














And finally, the triangle: Count Orsino, Countess Olivia, and Viola/Cesario. Le sigh.















Twelfth Night runs September 10-October 5. Photos by Kevin Berne.