TWELFTH NIGHT to Close Folger Theatre 2024-25 Season

Folger Theatre today announced the cast and creative team of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, directed by Mei Ann Teo, on stage at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill from May 13-June 22, 2025.

"Sexy, hilarious, and devastating" is how director Teo (Folger Theatre and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's Where We Belong) describes this vision for Shakespeare's comedy that includes romantic entanglements, separated twins, mistaken identities, pranks gone too far, and even a dash of revenge. Set in a brutalist landscape where a garden of love emerges amid the hard concrete, the shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as Cesario, exciting the passions of both Olivia and Orsino and inciting the jealousy of Malvolio. In Shakespeare's time, boys portrayed women's roles on stage, and this production of Twelfth Night playfully draws from both original staging practice and contemporary pop culture, fashion, and music-taking cues from Prince, Grace Jones, and Harry Styles-to create a parable about the transformative power of love and community.

"In the midst of a crumbling empire, our Twelfth Night revels in being able to make utter fools of ourselves for the kind of love that transcends everything, even grief," shares the director Teo, currently an Artistic Leader at Ping Chong and Company in New

York City. "Rife in original practice during Shakespeare's time when all the actors were male, is an abundance of slips and slides of desire amongst the characters in the raucous romps of Twelfth Night. Our production is fueled by the soulful pop of Be Steadwell, set in an underground world where these intricacies of desire cross all boundaries, stirring up hidden fantasies and possibilities."

At the center of the tangled love triangle are Olivia played by Alina Collins Maldonado (Folger Theatre's Romeo and Juliet); Viola/Cesario played by Lilli Hokama (Folger Theatre's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Amadeus); and Orsino played by Helen Hayes Award winner Alyssa Keegan (Folger Theatre's Richard III). Other faces familiar to Folger theatregoers are Hunter Ringsmith (A Midsummer Night's Dream) as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Todd Scofield (Romeo and Juliet) as Antonio.

Making their Folger debuts are El Beh (St. Ann's Warehouse: 24-Decade History of Popular Music) as Sebastian/Fabian, Che Kabia (SoHo Shakespeare Company: Richard III) as Sir Toby Belch, Futaba (Kennedy Center for Young Audiences:  The Adventures of Xenia Oya) as Feste, and Nicholas Yenson (Shakespeare Theatre Company: The Taming of the Shrew) as Malvolio, and Erika Johnson as Percussionist/ Music Director (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Strange Loop).

The creative team includes Tony Thomas (Choreographer), Be Steadwell (Composer), David I. Reynoso (Scenic Designer), Olivera Gajic (Costume Designer), Minjoo Kim (Lighting Designer), Justin Schmitz (Sound Designer), Yee Eun Nam (Projection Designer), Amy Kellett (Props Designer), Jen Rabbit Ring (Voice and Text Coach), Jesse Cameron Alick (Dramaturg), and Danica Rodriguez (Casting Director).

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