GILL — Northfield Mount Hermon students will perform the Shakespeare comedy “Twelfth Night” this week for its fall play from Thursday, Oct. 31 through Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Chiles Theater in the school’s Rhodes Arts Center.

According to the school and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the comedy follows the character Viola who becomes separated from her twin brother Sebastian during a shipwreck. Viola disguises herself as a man to woo the character Duke Orsino, and the play centers on a love triangle with mistaken identities as Orsino loves Countess Olivia who falls for Viola in disguise. There is a modern twist to this play with it being set on the Mediterranean Coast in the 1950s. 

Northfield Mount Hermon Theater Director Jared Eberlein explained that the cast and crew of 45 high school students took the comedy and made it something of their own while using Shakespeare as their jumping off point.

“Our mission for the fall has been how can we sort of knock Shakespeare down off of the pedestal that he was never meant to be kept on,” Eberlein said. “I think that having students do it, and seeing  how well they have embodied the text, and embodied the characters is all the proof you need to say [Shakespeare] is for everybody and for always.” 

Eberlein said that the last time Shakespeare was performed at Northfield Mount Hermon was around five years ago, and bringing it back was an opportunity for new students to engage in classical theater. The play will investigate “timeless” themes of gender, class and sexuality, and it offers audiences a chance to examine their relationships with the people around them through a Shakespeare performance.

When asked about how the students engaged with the material, Eberlein said that rather than performing a play that has been done before, the students were able to engage with the script and make it applicable to their lives and the times they are living in now.

“It's theirs, more than it is sort of like this museum piece that we're pulling out from under the sheet and dusting off,” Eberlein said.

 The performances will start Thursday night at 7:30 p.m., then again Friday night at the same time. Saturday will have a 2 p.m. matinee performance, then a closing show at 7 p.m. that night. 

Tickets are free, and the performance is open to the public. Tickets must be reserved ahead of time at https://www.nmhschool.org/academics/arts/tickets. For information on accessibility, Eberlein said people can email Fiona Spiegler at fspiegler@NMHschool.org. 

 Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.