Sure, as Hamlet said, \u201cthe play\u2019s the thing.” But in directing Twelfth Night<\/em> as part of his thesis work in theater, Custard needed to make the play more than a thing<\/em>, a noun: It had to move<\/em>, become a verb, where \u201ceveryone is really able to lean into the spirit and move loosely, to turn \u2018play\u2019 from being a thing we’re going to see, to the verb: playing on stage.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n The idea to stage Twelfth Night<\/em> on New Year\u2019s Eve in 1969 came to Custard on a flight to his hometown of Chicago last October. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, he was seizing an opportunity to step away from campus for a few weeks to work as an assistant sound designer at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He was also keeping up with his Bates studies, including reading Twelfth Night<\/em> for the course \u201cIntroduction to Design\u201d with Associate Professor of Theater B. Christine McDowell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the flight, just as he read the scene in which Feste the fool sings, \u201cO Mistress mine where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,\u201d Bowie was in his earphones, launching into \u201cStarman.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook out your window, I can see his light. If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was the epiphany. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, this works.\u2019 The seed was planted.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Twelfth Night <\/em>lends itself to unbridled tomfoolery, he says. What would it look like set in the late 1960s, the dawn of a new era of self-expression?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwelfth Night<\/em> is so joyful on the page \u2014 mistaken identities, love triangles, and drunken foolery. It’s not only really funny, but it\u2019s sending a message of living freely. That runs through every scene of the play.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI’ve always had this overwhelming need to be able to tell stories,\u201d adds Custard. \u201cI\u2019ve always known that whether it’s music or theater or some sort of live performance, being in the room with an audience, getting them to react in some way is important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHistory continues to repeat itself over and over, whether 1602, 1969, or 2021.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n McDowell became Custard\u2019s adviser, serving as set and costume designer for the play, creating what the director calls a \u201cbeautiful world full of bright, colorful costumes that are so flashy. The world came together because of the work that she’s done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Custard\u2019s approach to Twelfth Night<\/em> is more than just throwing some glitter around to see where it sticks. \u201cWhen a play is set in a time and place different from what we might expect, the text and the context need to reveal something deeper about each other in order to be an effective piece of storytelling. Otherwise, it\u2019s just camp.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In researching Twelfth Night<\/em>, Custard saw how \u201chistory continues to repeat itself over and over, whether 1602, 1969, or 2021. Stories of revolutionary love and social resistance will always be worth telling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll the reading to learn the theoretical backing of a play \u2014 that gets me excited because it makes my work good, because it helps me to know what I’m doing,\u201d he says. \u201cI’m not just throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his English major, Custard has shown his research ability with an honors thesis that delves into themes of disease and sexuality in <\/em>Romeo & Juliet<\/em> and Measure for Measure.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a study of how disease is working in the two plays,\u201d he says. In both plays, symptoms of physical illness are directly connected to the \u201cmisogynistic, exploitative, and often deeply racist, systems of oppression…at work in the fictionalized cities,\u201d which in turn, \u201ccan be used to represent modern cities \u2014 and the issues that we face today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBringing together the best of what everybody has to offer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n What Custard took away from the long process of directing Twelfth Night<\/em>, from the Feste-Bowie epiphany in 2019 to the closing performance on May 9, is how to be \u201ca much more dynamic collaborator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He learned, he says, to focus on ideas, less on personalities. \u201cBates is full of some of the strongest personalities that I think I’ve ever come across. It goes without saying that you will butt heads with people, particularly in creative spaces.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The result? \u201cBringing together the best of what everybody has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Custard took Shakespeare\u2019s Twelfth Night, added a dose of glam rock, and shook it all into something fresh, but also vintage, for the Bates stage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":139950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010,130,133],"tags":[12250,12232],"class_list":["post-139949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","category-collaboration","category-creativity","tag-voices","tag-voices-from-the-class-of-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139949"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139975,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139949\/revisions\/139975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2021\/05\/210503_Twelfth_Night_DSC0347.jpg\")
![\"Deon](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/02\/Deon_Custard.jpg\")