SOURCE: "Viola in Twelfth Night," in Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, edited by Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 81-91.

In the following essay, Wanamaker discusses her performance as Viola in John Caird's Production of Twelfth Night.

I had played Viola some ten years before John Caird's Stratford production of Twelfth Night, in a version directed by Richard Cotterill for the Cambridge Theatre Company. The sense (the constant sense in doing Shakespeare) that that version had not come up to expectations left me, however, quite ready to accept a second invitation to attempt the part. I had been in the Stratford company only once before, in 1978, mainly to play in new work at The Other Place (Piaf and Captain Swing) though I had been on the main stage as Bianca in Michael Bogdanov's production of...