What You Will, BRT’s new production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that infuses the classical Shakespeare text with the life and rhythms of the hip hop generation is collaboration between BRT’s Artistic Director Keith Baker and nationally renowned choreographer/artist Donald Byrd. The goal of the project is to reach our current generation and impact their participation in the arts. What You Will includes a cast of young artists and musicians and will premiere at BRT in the spring of 2009.

What You Will fuses all the accoutrements of contemporary hip hop culture and Elizabethan text through emotion, rhythm and language. The ideal outcome is a highly professional production attended by a diverse and informed audience that shares the same multi-generational demographics that will be represented on stage and in the creators. Both Keith Baker and Donald Byrd feel that the theatre can’t survive unless there are younger people engaged as participants/witnesses/audiences.

To deepen the understanding, familiarity and impact that this work will have on its audiences, BRT will provide a series of activities and programs throughout the year that will culminate in the premiere of What You Will at Bristol Riverside Theatre.

This project has been supported by a grant from the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative with additional support from the Marketing Innovation Program, both programs of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.