By Gracie Gardner
Directed by Brant Russell
Performed by the MFA in Professional Acting with Independent Production
July 2022
Taking the ending of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as its starting point, Malvolios weaves a fantastical tale, catapulting the character from his moment of painful humiliation into the here and now, within a public realm defined by social media.
Gracie Gardner’s delightfully quirky play examines the shattering of a personality through rejection. Our Malvolio splits into twelve eccentric selves – each a clear facet of the personality in crisis, and each seething with competing desires and needs. The added complication is that they must all now attempt a resolution under the full glare of social media’s judgmentalism.
At times zany and irreverent, this comic exploration also offers poignant reflections on who we are individually, and on our need to belong. How does anyone process, and ultimately cope with being shunned? How can these twelve damaged Malvolios reconcile and make a virtue of their experience?
Or will they simply be – “revenged upon you all!”