Every year the ESOL department have the opportunity to delight students, teachers and local parents with their annual plays produced by the Theater without Borders company. This year the students took the stage on Friday night bringing a lot of laugh and comedy with their spring production Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.

Twelfth Night is one William Shakespeare’s comedic and romantic plays that narrates the story of two brothers from Italy, Sebastian and Viola (played by Mavis Luvify and Ramluv Fofana respectively) who are separated on a shipwreck, both starting a new life without hearing or seeing from each other. Throughout the play, the story is centered on Olivia who falls in love with Viola, who is disguised as a man named Cesario, working for Orsino, who is in love with Olivia. After a series of events happen finally, Viola reveals her real identity and reencounters with her brother she thought was dead, and they live happily after.

Optimism and enthusiasm made the play successful and enjoyable for the viewers from the very beginning to the end.

“I liked the enthusiasm, it was very funny and well done,” history teacher John Jawens said. “I think they performed very professionally.”

Laughs could be heard everywhere in the theater. Actors and actresses showed that even though English is not their first language, they still memorized their lines and performed with clear dialogue.

“I definitely enjoyed the play. I am so proud of them because I know how hard is to be on stage and also to memorize the lines and act it out for the public,”  junior Karla Suarez said. “It’s a big challenge and it takes a lot of effort and dedication to perform professionally.”

This year’s Theater without Borders decided to give the audience something more fun, where people could relax and have a good time.

“This play was chosen because Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s beloved comedies and we wanted to have it in our group since there are many seniors who are good at comedy,” sponsor Leslie Chekin said.

Actors and actresses were more than happy with the characters they had to play because they could relate  and have fun at the same time while they were on stage.

“The reason why I liked this character that I played was because is a comedy character and every time I am on stage, I like to play a comedy character” sophomore Lftikhar Ahmad said.

Being an English learner student did not stop them to give 100 percent of their time and dedication to memorize one page-long full of old english that for the many students it was challenging but worth it at the end.

“Just memorizing the lines was hard because I had one of the main roles and it was really difficult for me,” junior Mavis Osei said.

Twelfth Night director and stage managers  Wilson Tosta Xenia Parada talk about how directing and organizing the play helped them to more to be open-minded and how important is to listen to new ideas from your teammates.

“I learned that as a director, I need to let others share ideas so we can make the play better,” Tosta said.

“Overall, what we learned from this experience was to work together as a group and how to treat each other even better,” Parada said.