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If you really want to experience Grand Island Senior High's production of "Twelfth Night," you may have to go more than once.
No, the play's not that complicated. But it is the first show in director Greg Ulmer's career that features two entirely different casts, which will each perform twice next week.
"The hope is that, as an audience member, you see two completely different shows," Ulmer said.
That distinctive arrangement has made for a new experience for both Ulmer and the 40-plus students who make up the show's casts.
The program usually produces two Shakespeare plays each year, performed by separate all-female and all-male casts.
But Ulmer said no potential plays worked well with this year's single-sex casts, and when 47 students auditioned for parts in "Twelfth Night," he wanted to cast as many as possible in order to keep them from losing interest in the program.
So Ulmer put together two casts, named "The Globe" and "Royal Shakespeare Company," that were made up of a mix of older and younger students.
Ulmer's double-casting idea wasn't exactly met with enthusiasm by the program's upperclassmen, who would rather have performed with a cast of solely experienced actors.
"I'm not going to lie I wasn't too thrilled," said Josh Lonergan, a senior. "I didn't want an underclassman showing me up."
But the concept grew on the students as the two casts began to take on personalities of their own. Having an easy replacement on call for absent cast members helped out, too.
Members of both casts said they've interpreted lines, situations and scenes differently from each other, adding their distinctive flavor to Shakespeare's words.
"We brought the comedy out of it," said Millie Bartlett, a senior with The Globe. "We just have a good time."
Members of the Royal Shakespeare Company said their performance brings out the laughs, too, though they said their show relies more on innuendo than the Globe's more physical comedy.
The students said it took them a while to mine the comedy out of Shakespeare's writing, but they all had "light bulb" moments when they finally saw the meaning jump out of the 16th-century language.
For Levi Benson, a junior with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it was when he realized his character, Malvolio, was not only a butler, but a Puritan, too.
"When the light bulb does come on, everything is turned around," Benson said.
The show will be performed "in the round," with audience members surrounding a simple stage setup at GISH's Little Theater.
The arrangement makes the drama of the show inescapable for the audience, and it teaches the students a new dimension of acting, Ulmer said.
Combined with the difficult language of Shakespeare, it's a tough challenge, but Ulmer said the students have attacked it with enthusiasm.
"Your typical high school is not going to have 46 people, 47 people audition for Shakespeare," he said. "But for our kids, it's the highlight of their year."
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