Bringing Back the Bard: Felicia Holmes talks ‘Twelfth Night’
In the week leading up to the winter solstice, I sat down with a handful of local theatre-makers to reflect on the year, learn about people’s upcoming projects, and find out what was keeping them warm through the short, dark days of December. This interview with Felicia Holmes is the eighth in a series which will appear on the Kingston Theatre Alliance’s Performance Blog in the early months of 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When it comes to theatre, Felicia Holmes is up for anything. “I’m an actor, primarily, but I’m passionate about all aspects of theatre, and whenever I’m needed, I like to jump in. I went to the SLC [St. Lawrence College] music theatre program, and right from the very beginning, I was in the joint program with Queen’s. So two years at SLC, and then two years at Queen’s.”
Since graduating, she’s jumped into local theatre with gusto. A familiar face from Domino Theatre’s As You Like It and Seymour Irons’ Sooth project at the Kick & Push Festival, I also remember seeing Holmes dancing with Sierrah Zawacki last year at the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA), where they demonstrated a motion-sensor 3D puppetry software. Now, Holmes is embarking on her own project: a “Bard in the bar”-style production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for Blue Canoe’s Juvenis Festival, which opens tomorrow and runs until Sunday, May 4 at—rather fittingly—Renaissance on Queen Street.
When we spoke in December, she was preparing to step into her role as director. “I took Grahame [Renyk]’s directing course at Queen’s, and I directed and choreographed for the kids at the Thousand Islands Playhouse two summers ago—back when I thought I wanted to be a teacher—so that’s been my primary experience directing. It turned out great, because now I’m going to direct an adult show, and I think directing adults will be much easier.”
Talking about the project, her eyes light up. “My gosh, there are so many unusual things about it. It’s Shakespeare. And initially, when I had applied for the Juvenis Festival, I didn’t think it was going to get accepted. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna pitch it just for fun,’ because it was an idea that I had of doing Shakespeare at a bar and getting to try to pay people with a profit share model. And I didn’t know if Blue Canoe would go for it, because they don’t usually do things like this—a lot of Kingston community theatre doesn’t really do that. And then they said yes. So that was a big credit to them, for being open to it. It’s definitely different from what Blue Canoe usually does. But Blue Canoe is a good in-between space, and I think it’s a good time for me to explore and learn.”
Finding a venue for the show was its own challenge. “It was hard reaching out to places—they’re kind of like, ‘Shakespeare at a bar? No, no,’ but Paul [Fortier] at the Renaissance has been very open to the concept, which is really exciting. So, yeah, it’s going to be cool. It’s not like a super traditional bar—they do more fancy dining experiences—but there is a bar there.”
This unique space will allow Holmes to get creative with the staging. “There’s going to be an alley where actors can come through the space to get to the stage area. I’m hoping it’ll be kind of like the Globe, where the actors can talk to people and observe people, and things can come up—before and during intermission, the actors will be encouraged to engage with the audience, sometimes as themselves, and other times as the characters. So kind of breaking that fourth wall and making it immersive.”
By inviting rowdiness from the groundlings, Holmes is taking a page from Shakespeare’s folio. “In Elizabethan times, theatre etiquette wasn’t such a big thing. People are welcome to get up and get a drink, or speak their opinions to their friends about what’s happening in the play. But that’s kind of hard to pull out of the audience nowadays, because we’re conditioned to be respectful and quiet.” In keeping with the 400-year throwback, tickets are priced on a sliding scale, with three cheekily-named levels—nobles, gentry, and yeoman—as well as a pay-what-you-can option.
Audience engagement has always been part of Holmes’ love of theatre, and it played a special role in her first Shakesperience. “I’m a huge Shakespeare nerd. When I was in grade four, my teacher back in Toronto made us do Much Ado About Nothing. I didn’t even have a very big role—I played Verges, the constable’s assistant. So I didn’t have very many lines, but I wore my dad’s giant TTC hat. When I was on stage, I would nod my head to the constable, and the hat would fall down, and people would laugh. And I just got so excited about making people laugh that I was like, ‘Shakespeare is awesome.’ I loved to perform. And ever since then, I’ve been a huge Shakespeare person.”
As a fellow Shakespeare enthusiast, I’m excited to see a renaissance of the Bard’s work in Kingston. The first play I ever saw in this city was a production of Hamlet at the Baby Grand in 2014, but for the past several years, there seems to have been a dearth of Shakespeare. Holmes agrees with this observation—until Domino’s As You Like It last spring, she saw a Shakespeare gap in local theatre. “They apparently used to do a lot of Shakespeare, and then it got shut down with the pandemic and everything. But I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I should do Shakespeare,’ because no one really does it here anymore. I think people would really like it. I think to me, Shakespeare is like a canvas where we can change it and manipulate it how we want.”
Shaping Twelfth Night into something that resonates with young adults today is part of the fun. “I definitely think Shakespeare was a feminist, but I also think he was catering to olden values at the same time. There’s definitely some misogyny and racial things that can be changed and added upon, but overall, I think the stories are really great and can be really funny. And if you’re not a playwright, which I’m not, then it can be a really good thing to just play around with.”
Felicia Holmes (She/Her) is a half Filipino theatre artist based in Kingston who performs in many mediums including voice, Shakespeare, movement, puppetry, improvisation and more. Felicia’s thankful for all the amazing opportunities she’s had recently: Theatre Orangeville’s ‘Boys Girls and Other Mythological Creatures’ (Abbey), Domino’s ‘As You Like It’ (Phebe), Inclusive Comedy’s ‘Sunday Night Live’ (Improv), Blue Canoe’s ‘High Society’ (Liz Imbrie), and ‘Sooth Shivers’ with Kick and Push.
‘Twelfth Night’ plays at the Renaissance from April 29 to May 4, 2025 as part of Blue Canoe’s Juvenis Festival. Tickets and more information can be found here.
