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In the summer of 2017 the perennial favorite, Twelfth Night, was performed again at Shakespeare's Globe in London, this time under the direction of Emma Rice, who departed as artistic director after only two seasons. Rice had a well-publicized dispute with the Globe's board over her use of sound amplification and stage-focused lighting at the theater, elements that board members felt distracted from the raison d'être of the Globe: to explore historical performance conditions in a reconstructed early modern space. In keeping with her postmodern aesthetic, Rice's production of Twelfth Night featured modern stage lighting, amplified disco hits, and a basso profundo drag performer playing the role of Feste. Obviously, what audiences heard and saw in Rice's Twelfth Night was a world away from the sounds heard in Tim Carroll's production of Twelfth Night, first performed at Middle Temple Hall and the Globe (2002) and later revived at the Globe, in the West End, and on Broadway (in 2012–2014). This was an "original practices" production, a performance approach collaboratively developed in the mid-1990s by personnel at the Globe: Mark Rylance (who served as Artistic Director), Jenny Tiramani (Director of Theatre Design), and Claire van Kampen (Director of Music). Carroll's Twelfth Night featured an all-male cast of actors clad in meticulous reproductions of Renaissance costumes, early modern approaches to staging, including the lighting design (the lights were kept on throughout the performance and dripping beeswax candles hung above the stage), and music from Shakespeare's time arranged by van Kampen and played on period instruments, as I observed when I attended the Broadway production at the Belasco Theatre in January 2014.1
Because of the ongoing tensions and controversies associated with the Globe's mission, it seems an appropriate time to re-evaluate the "original practices" approach and its relationship to discourses of authenticity. Theater historians and literary scholars have examined "original practices" from various perspectives, but my essay focuses primarily on its musical components. Because music is a highly specialized field, there has been less academic consideration of musical choices within "original practices" productions, although David Lindley has written an important essay on the subject ("Music, Authenticity, and Audience") and van Kampen, the music director for Twelfth Night, has described her creative process in multiple...