Making Ready for Shakespeare

Back-stage at the Opera House when the New Zealand Players were getting ready to present "Twelfth Night" to a Gisborne audience last month, all was curiously quiet.

We found none of the expected hustle-bustle one imagines precedes every stage performance. There were no frantic last-minute directions, no hurried conferences on stage arrangements, no urgent time—calls echoing in the corridors.

But behind every dressing-room door we found plenty going on, as members of the cast transformed themselves into the guise and habit of Shakespearean characters.