Ian McKellen To Open All-Trans Production of Twelfth Night
Sir Ian McKellen is set to open a production of Shakespearian comedy, Twelfth Night, featuring an all-trans and non-binary cast.
Trans What You Will, a theatre group dedicated to playing Shakespeare’s works with trans and non-binary performers, is staging a rehearsed reading of Twelfth Night, with Sir Ian announced as the surprise guest introduction on Wednesday.
“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.”
The play follows the stories of twins Viola and Sebastian, who survive a shipwreck but aren’t aware the other is alive. Disguised as a young man named Cesario, Viola goes into service with Count Orsino of Illyria, who sends her to woo the Lady Olivia on his behalf, but Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Viola, in the meantime, has fallen in love with Orsino.
“You’ve got a lady disguised as a man, seducing another lady on behalf of a lord, but nothing goes to plan when the lady falls for the disguised lady, and the disguised lady falls for the lord!” Trans What You Will said.
“With mistaken identities, cross-dressing, and declarations of love across shifting gender roles, Twelfth Night has long explored the complexity of identity.
“This production makes that queerness explicit, reclaiming the story through the lived experiences of trans and non-binary artists.”
Trans What You Will will be live streaming the reading, and are crowdfunding for production costs, with any profit generated to be donated to the UK charity Not a Phase.
No age or injury slowing Sir Ian down
Despite turning 86 only this week, Sir Ian isn’t slowing down any time soon.
Earlier this year, he starred in 14-year-old Jacob Franklin’s directorial debut.
The film, Dragged Through Time, focuses on 1000 years of LGBTQIA+ history, as well as what it means to be queer today.
“I often look back to myself at his age and regret I wasn’t close enough to my parents to talk to them about what I knew about myself,” McKellen said in a behind-the-scenes video posted to Facebook.
“I never told either of my parents that their only son was gay. The idea that at 14 I could have plucked up the courage to have a conversation with them about something so personal… to see [Jacob] in this situation makes me think perhaps I could have done this if I had been a bit braver or if the world had been a bit different.”
Last year, McKellen suffered a broken wrist and chipped vertebra after falling off a stage during a performance of Player Kings, however he’s refusing to let age or injury damped his thesbian spirit.
“I shall just keep at it as long as the legs and the lungs and the mind keep working,” he told BBC Breakfast.
