Match: Lit presents Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT. “We have all grieved in some way these last two years; some of us have also grown in the last two years: that’s what I’d always seen in TWELFTH NIGHT.” Sgarro, an actor and musician, plays Feste with their own original music featured in the production. Zeynep Akca, a queer, Turkish interdisciplinary teaching artist and director based in Brooklyn, is their director. Akca has previously worked with TADA! Youth Theatre, Acting Out! and Amas Musical Theatre, and currently works at Girl Be Heard. As a director, she has worked plays in the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival, The Tank’s Pride Fest, and at The Brick. She is the Artistic Director of No Exit Theatre Collective and a producer on SCOWL: Fight Theatre. She holds her Masters’ in Applied Theatre from CUNY SPS.

“TWELFTH NIGHT is often interpreted to have an ‘all-tied-up-in-a-nice-little-bow’ ending,” Akca notes. “But if these characters have changed in the course of the play, what if what they want also changes by the end? And what does ‘normalcy’ become for them? Can they just go ‘back to normal’?” And get ready: Illyria has been affectionately and jokingly named ‘Ill-queer-ia.’ “If you’re an audience member who will get impatient with gender identity and sexuality being normalized or explored, you’re probably going to have a terrible time here,” Sgarro, a nonbinary artist themselves, laughs. “It is so gay, and in the best way! The whole play gets exponentially more queer every time we read it and we are reveling in it.” Akca agrees: “It’s been a joy to explore themes around queerness and gender identity, as well as community and grief—and all of us can relate!” “We’ve just been through the ringer,” Sgarro adds, “and we’re all coping in different ways. The characters are too, and they sometimes misunderstand each other; it’s a very different, very deeply human conflict. To us, this isn’t a farce where we just laugh at an uptight guy who got tricked into wearing yellow stockings.”

TWELFTH NIGHT is directed by Zeynep Akca starring Nazlah Black as Sir Toby Belch, Arin Edelstein as Antonio, Lauren E King as Sebastian, Robin Murray as Viola, Naima Randolph as Maria, Regina Renée Russell* as Olivia, Owen Grayson Schiller as Malvolio, Kristin Sgarro as Feste, Anna Stacy as Duke Orsino, and Rachel Weekley as Curio/Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The production team includes Kristin Sgarro (Composer), Lisa LaGrande (Intimacy Director), Rudi Utter (Text Coach and Technical Director), Brynne O’Rourke (Assistant Director) and
Sydnee Davis (Stage Manager). Running time is 2 hours 15 minutes including one intermission.

Match: Lit was founded in 2015 and has in that time put six full productions on the map, five of them works by William Shakespeare. In 2018, they began their landmark BARDcore reading series—easily the event that puts them on the local monthly map, with 90-minute cuts of Shakespeare plays that get performed over bar trivia.To follow Match: Lit on social media and get sneak peeks of their past readings and other performances, you’ll find them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/matchlit, and on both Instagram and Twitter at @matchlittheatre.