Ingrid

why won't theaters sell me films of their plays

the 2019 Royal Shakespeare Company Twelfth Night¹ totally changed my perspective on the relationship between Cesario/Orsino/Olivia and there is absolutely no legal² way to see it again and it's killing me

1. fair warning if you ever get a chance to see it, the production really doesn't understand women at all, but its male characters (including Cesario) are just outstanding

2. or illegal as far as I can tell!!!

Okay okay since everybody¹'s asking, the fundamental insight that this production brings to Cesario/Orsino/Olivia is not just that Orsino is gay, but that he's specifically using his supposed overwhelming love for Olivia as a beard-in-absentia. His melodramatic melancholy makes his heterosexuality unquestionable at the same time as it's impossible to act upon, because he knows very well Olivia will never accept his suit. And then in turn it gives him an excuse to become more intimate with his male servants (Cesario especially). This then frames Cesario as very specifically a trans man, and the resolution of the play as Orsino reaping the fruits of a society whose oppression cancels itself out in this small case: he is able to be with man only because the world, and indeed the text of the play, refuses to acknowledge Cesario as a man.

I'd provide some examples of how the play is staged to emphasize this reading, but I haven't seen it since 2019 and there's no way for me to fix that

1. nobody

you absolutely can rent this production online, at least in the US, and I think probably more places as well! if you're a theatre (and some opera/ballet/other dance/musicals/symphony) sicko this service (Digital Theatre) might be worth a subscription, as they have a pretty good and also large catalog of productions!

it's also the home of one of the best Much Ado About Nothings I've seen, the Tate/Tennant production from 2011.