Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

The Shakespearean comedy Twelfth Night is coming to The Schoolhouse Theater’s main stage May 24 through June 10, marking the first time a Shakespearean production has ever graced the Schoolhouse stage.  To celebrate the occasion, the Schoolhouse is bringing Penny Cherns, head of the classical acting department at the esteemed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
(LAMDA), to Croton Falls to direct this beloved comedy.

Twelfth Night tells the story of Viola, who impulsively chooses to dress like her twin brother to fend for herself while in a foreign land.  As she does this, she enters a situation as seemingly crazed as the moment when Alice stepped through the Looking Glass. Shakespeare’s adventure plays with oppositions, with exaggeration and delicacy and in the end exhorts us to seize the day and not
live in an imagined romance. Sure to be an audience favorite! 

Penny Cherns has directed Twelfth Night in workshop
form numerous times, twice in Spanish at theaters in Barcelona and Buenos Aires.  Cherns trained in the Directors Course at the Drama Centre.  She served as Associate Director at Chester, Watford and Nottingham Playhouse and worked at the RSC, the Royal Court and the New End theatres.  She has directed dramas for the BBC and Channel 4 television and has taught international workshops in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Oslo, Brazil and Uruguay.  In America, she has taught and directed at Brandeis, Juilliard, Yale and the University of Iowa, and in England at LAMDA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), Drama Centre and the Guildhall. 

Performances of Twelfth Night are scheduled Thursday-Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.  Tickets are $33 on Thursday and Friday and $35 on Saturday and Sunday.  Audience members will have a chance to ask questions of Penny Cherns after the Sunday, May 27, performance during a Talk Back.

The Schoolhouse Theater and Gallery is a unique setting for the arts in Westchester.  Built in 1926, the brick building served as an active school until 1976.  Galleries exhibit many fine local artists, while the theater, where every seat feels like a front-row-seat, accommodates audiences of less than 100.  Theatergoers enjoy the intimate quality of the space, as well as the all-Equity
casts who bring theatrical excellence and experience from Broadway to Croton Falls.

Over the years, The New York Times has called The
Schoolhouse Theater “Westchester’s sole claim to consistent, professional theater, where people can see plays they are not likely to see elsewhere.”  The Schoolhouse is a regional Equity theater, dedicated to presenting professional theatrical performances by award-winning playwrights and to support and promote other art forms.

The Schoolhouse is located at 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, NY, just off exit 8 on I-684. For reservations, call the box office at 914-277-8477. More information about The Schoolhouse Theater and Gallery is on the web at www.schoolhousetheater.org.