As one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, Twelfth Night offers a brilliant exploration of love, identity, and transformation. This October, we are thrilled to welcome Actors From The London Stage, a dynamic ensemble of performers who will breathe fresh life into this timeless play. Hailing from varied backgrounds and experiences, Hayden Wood, Sarah Finigan, Thuliswa Magwaza, Shona Babayemi, and Sam Jenkins-Shaw each bring their unique talents to the production, blending the joy and challenges of performing Shakespeare’s works.
Join us as the actors share their thoughts on performing for live audiences, the joys of Shakespeare, and what they hope audiences will take away from their vibrant rendition of Twelfth Night.
What do you look forward to the most when performing in front of an audience?
Hayden Wood: The connection between the performers and the audience. Having an audience is like having another cast member who slightly changes the energy, rhythm, and tone of the show every night. The audience reminds us that we’re storytellers!
Sarah Finigan: I agree with Hayden—I look forward to the audience themselves. Audiences can be so different, and it’s fun trying to adapt or suit your storytelling to your particular audience.
Thuliswa Magwaza: 100% agree with Sarah and Hayden, and I would also add getting to share something we’ve made and are proud of—the sheer task of a character’s journey and a story’s journey—getting to share that is a joy.
Shona Babayem: The alchemy of an audience can change the course of an evening. A different reaction, an unexpected gasp, or a laugh keeps every performance fresh, exciting, and fun!
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: The chance to play with them, for them and to them; to listen to how they respond and to tell a story for a group of people all there with the same intention—to be entertained, moved, and inspired.
What do you feel is the most challenging aspect of performing in Shakespeare productions?
Hayden Wood: Honoring the brilliance and beauty of the words whilst also keeping the emotions and beats of the story feeling clear, contemporary, and relatable.
Sarah Finigan: Well, it’s pretty old English and can be fairly difficult to understand, particularly if you’re new to Shakespeare, so making the text clear and understandable is quite a challenge.
Thuliswa Magwaza: The very specific breath control that is necessary to complete thoughts, images—whatever point is the most important in your bit of text and maintaining a flow/cadence in your speech that can sustain that!
Shona Babayemi: The balance of honouring the text but also honouring a society that has changed and evolved. As well as very simple things like remembering to BREATHE.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Making the language your own, discovering it in the moment, and making sure it’s clear for the audience.
Photo by Marc Brenner.
How does this particular production make you feel?
Hayden Wood: Joyous, grateful, and tired!
Sarah Finigan: Proud of what we’ve created together, and yes, joyous.
Thuliswa Magwaza: It makes me laugh, and it definitely makes me feel grateful and joyous!
Shona Babayemi: Giddy.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Because there are five of us doing the whole show and we never leave the stage, it’s hard to feel anything—you just get on the rollercoaster and let the story take you.
Are there any messages/feelings you’d like the audience to take away from this production?
Hayden Wood: Be who you are. Take care of each other. I want everyone to feel at home in this world of our Twelfth Night.
Sarah Finigan: Be true to yourself. Don’t let anyone dictate to you who you can or can’t love.
Thuliswa Magwaza: Explore and get to know the crevices, nooks, and crannies of yourself because that’s where you’ll find your authentic self, and that’s where you’ll find your community. Also take up space! Be comfortable standing in the light; you belong in it!
Shona Babayemi: Shakespeare is for all.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Shakespeare is for everyone, and art can be made under any circumstances.
What is your favorite Shakespeare play?
Hayden Wood: The Winter’s Tale!
Sarah Finigan: Twelfth Night!
Thuliswa Magwaza: Whichever one I’m doing!
Shona Babayemi: The one where they fall in love.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: The Winter’s Tale / Much Ado About Nothing.
What inspired you to get involved in theater?
Hayden Wood: As an incredibly shy ten-year-old, I was forced to play the Dame in my elementary school pantomime. As soon as I hit the stage, that shyness melted away, and I’ve barely shut up since!
Sarah Finigan: A drama teacher in high school told me I had a talent, so I tried to study drama at university but ended up becoming a very young single parent instead. Then, when my son was 17 and I was in my late 30s, an actor friend of mine encouraged me to go to drama school. So I did!
Thuliswa Magwaza: When I was five, I jumped up on stage in a shopping mall where little girls like me were doing a catwalk. I was adamant (and apparently told my mother) that that should be me up there, so I ran onto that stage and did my own! My inspiration came from an impulse, an instinct!
Shona Babayemi: I love to write, and I love forms of writing that come alive when spoken. When given the opportunity to share a creative speech at school, I thought, “Yeah, I quite like this.”
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Doing The Winter’s Tale in my final year of high school made me realise what acting meant to me, so I pursued it since then.
How do you prepare before a performance?
Hayden Wood: I like to feel physically relaxed, mentally agile, and connected with my fellow performers. I always meditate before shows and am a big fan of pre-show games. Laughter is good too, and music!
Sarah Finigan: With a big old physical and vocal warm up, geared towards the physical and vocal demands of the performance.
Thuliswa Magwaza: A physical and vocal warm up to loosen and smooth out my own tensions. I love laughing; I need music and then a moment of gratitude just before I step out.
Shona Babayemi: Being grounded. Meditation. Physical and dexterous vocal warm up. Lots of tea and lots of honey.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: I do a big vocal warm up, a lot of stretching and breathing. I listen to a lot of music and run most of my lines at breakneck speed to make sure they’re there in my head.
How do you stay motivated throughout a demanding season?
Hayden Wood: I always try to find different energies every night. More often than not, those energies come from the other actors on stage. I love the teamwork involved in our job. And most importantly, remembering that what we do (and what we love doing) is for our audience more than anyone else!
Sarah Finigan: I think staying motivated during a season is the easy part. It’s staying motivated when you’re out of work that’s hard. And all actors (unless you’re in the top 1%) have periods when they’re not working as performers.
Thuliswa Magwaza: Touching base with your company, your team—pulling on each other’s strength. Focusing on the audience—it may be your 500th show, but it’s their first!
Shona Babayemi: Relaying back to the first question—it’s the audience. I think of the person who has never been to the theatre or the person who has seen a version of the play 17 times! They deserve to feel the very best; they deserve to feel as though this was meant for them.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Keep listening, keep discovering, and when things are feeling less than fresh, go back to my senses and trust my eyes, ears, nose, and my whole body.
Do you have a favorite or memorable performance?
Hayden Wood: I was in the West End cast of The Play That Goes Wrong for a year. That’s my favourite show on the West End, so that was a real privilege. And Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly came!
Sarah Finigan: The Merry Wives of Windsor at The Globe Theatre. It was a fun show with a super friendly cast. I’m still friends with a lot of them. Mark Rylance saw the show and congratulated me—I was stoked about that!
Thuliswa Magwaza: Much Ado About Nothing at The Duke of York’s Theatre. We were all incredibly close by the time the show came around, and there was one performance where the backing track of the last song wouldn’t play and the track was stuck on the sound queue before. The main singer of that song just started a cappella, and we joined in and did the entire dance and song with just our voices and our joy. As an ensemble, we all had a trust and understanding of each other, and that collective power made me feel so confident!
Shona Babayemi: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I played Helena and Puck! One matinee we had a group of brilliantly rowdy school kids. It was tough to play, but during Helena’s “Lo, she is one of this confederacy” speech, you could hear a pin drop. It was exhilarating.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: I once played Macbeth to a group of schoolchildren in SE London. At one point in our production, I killed Lady Macduff and also her recently born baby (all props, of course) by stamping on its head. A young lad, about ten years old, stood up and shouted “OH NO, HE DIDN’T!” whilst pointing at me. Very memorable.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your work? The most challenging?
Hayden Wood: The most enjoyable part is certainly the people—be they the other actors we get to work with or the characters we get to inhabit. The most challenging is the scheduling, which is a boring answer! Being a freelance artist is often so rewarding but can be really hard—missing friends’ weddings, jobs getting canceled, things like that. When I’m working on a show, I basically love it all.
Sarah Finigan: Playing and pretending to be other people with other people who like doing that too is the most enjoyable part of the job. Learning to deal with rejection is challenging—you do a lot of auditions and get a lot of “no”s.
Thuliswa Magwaza: I love rehearsals, spending an entire day on one idea to completely scrap it and try another one! Most challenging part is doing my taxes. I’m not built for it; I can’t wait until I can afford a lovely accountant.
Shona Babayemi: The never really knowing. It can be tough not knowing what’s around the corner. It makes it hard to plan! In the same breath, I love the anticipation and the flexibility this crazy, wild profession of love gives me.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: The most enjoyable part is meeting new people, finding new places, and spending a life without looking at a screen. The hardest part is the financial and social insecurity that comes with being an actor.
At what age did you begin acting?
Photo by James Ledwith.
Hayden Wood: I first performed when I was ten, although I didn’t act regularly until I was at university. I was a member of a theater company called Belt Up. My work with them got me into the industry.
Sarah Finigan: I was in an amateur production at age 19, but my first professional job was at the tender age of 38!
Thuliswa Magwaza: I started acting, and taking it quite seriously, when I was eleven, but the trajectory of my career and where everything points back to would be becoming part of the National Youth Theatre when I was seventeen.
Shona Babayemi: Professionally somewhere around 2017. But really, since I was a child, I’ve loved theatre and performance.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: I’ve done it all my life, but became professional at 23.
Which artists/actors inspire you?
Hayden Wood: Big-hearted storytellers inspire me: Robin Williams, Bryan Cranston, Sally Rooney, Craig Finn. People who make beautiful work but with space for the audience to interpret and fill in the gaps. There are lots more, of course, but those spring immediately to mind!
Sarah Finigan: Oh, I could name a lot of famous actors, but it’s the theatre companies that make a difference to society that really inspire me: Clean Break, Graeae, Good Chance, Synergy. Look them up!
Thuliswa Magwaza: I’m most inspired and awed by my peers. Watching members of my cohort of training and those who trained in the same place as me. People I’ve worked with—I watch their processes, I watch them perform, and I get to call them my peers. The desire to keep up inspires me!
Shona Babayemi: I have to piggyback off Sarah here. Organisations that create change and the artists who are fostered there inspire me the most. Clean Break, Talawa, Graeae, Good Chance, Synergy, Nouveau Riche Cardboard Citizens. To name but a few.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: Mark Rylance for his wizardry, Lia Williams for her truth, Kelly Hunter for her rebelliousness, Janine Harouni for telling her stories, Robin Williams (say no more), Sally Hawkins for creating such an array of people, Leonard Cohen for his words, and Sally Cookson for her shows. William Shakespeare for all of the above.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Hayden Wood: I love sports and sports writing, music, and time with family and friends. And craft beer and cooking!
Sarah Finigan: I like watching cricket and football (soccer!) I love reading, going to the theatre, watching live music, and I also love craft beer!
Thuliswa Magwaza: I’m a BIG reader. And I will always spend an unseemly amount of money on live music and going to the theatre. (BIG yoga, pilates enthusiast as well).
Shona Babayemi: I write, read, hike, cycle gym, and spend all my spare money at the theatre or live concerts.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: I watch a lot of film and TV, I go to the theatre, I cycle, I swim, I gym—I keep my body and brain active to fuel my passion for theatre.
Do you have any advice that you would give to aspiring artists/actors?
Hayden Wood: Take the work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously! The art and the job will be important to you, but having a well-rounded life is the most important thing (and will make us all better artists!). Keep discovering and learning new things. Art is curiosity. Know that those things that make you a unique person are your greatest strengths as an artist.
Sarah Finigan: Persevere! It’s a tough industry, but keep going and try to keep learning. A flexible job (or the side hustle, as we call it) that you can do between acting jobs is essential too.
Thuliswa Magwaza: Fill your life with things you love just as much as acting and live a full life, so when that audition comes, it’s a lovely surprise and a nice addition to your beautiful world rather than the whole world! (Life experiences make you a better actor!).
Shona Babayemi: There is a lot of power in the word “NO.” And the greatest artists have lived a bit of life.
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: If this is what you need to do—what you have to do—then do it. Go out there and make it happen. Oh, and there is no acting talent better than being a nice person in a room.
The Actors From The London Stage’s rendition of Twelfth Night is set to delight audiences with its vibrant energy, thoughtful performances, and timeless message of love and self-discovery. Each actor’s passion for Shakespeare’s writing shines through, inviting audiences to both revel in the humor and reflect on the deeper themes of identity and connection. This performance promises to be a magical experience for seasoned Shakespeare fans and newcomers alike.
Don’t miss your chance to see this talented ensemble in action later this month!
October 30–November 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Actors From The London Stage presents Twelfth Night
Love, deception, ambition, and desire collide in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s great romantic comedy. Twelfth Night features some of Shakespeare’s most famed passages, a delightful blend of mistaken identity, disguises, and love triangles, with its effervescent comic energy carried swiftly by deeper, richer currents of grief, forgiveness, and transformation. Fast, energetic, and gloriously entertaining, Twelfth Night is one of the great playwright’s most popular and enduring stories.
*Made possible by the Laura and Jack Boyd Smith, Jr. Endowment for Excellence in the Performing Arts and the Gayle and Steven C. Francis Endowment for Excellence in Creativity.
