Nights at the Hotel Illyria

Nights at the Hotel Illyria describes a production of Shakespeares Twelfth Night which was produced as a part of the 35th Anniversary of Shakespeare in High Park, directed and edited by Tanja Jacobs. The paper places the play in its historical context, and goes on to describe a production concept which sets the action of the play in and around a hotel in the early 1970s, a place for transients and of transience. The paper presents a description of the ways in which this conceptual lens creates a world for the play that not only expresses Shakespeares themes which are also described in detail but also is directly intelligible to a contemporary audience. Parallels are drawn between the theatrical and socio-cultural innovations of Shakespeare in his writing of Twelfth Night, and tantamount moments of political, social, and artistic upheaval which took place in the Western world during the 1970s.