The Ballarat-based Ozact founder and director said this has offered a unique experience for every performance in the company's 25 years of touring south-eastern Australia's great outdoors.

Often a plane will fly over the Elizabethan-era stories unfolding. Once a person in running gear ran through the set.

But it was working with the natural elements that Mr Widdop said could be the most challenge and, often, the most rewarding.

"Performing outdoors, there's always something...when it has rained during a performance, these are often the ones an audience retains the most and talks about years later," Mr Widdop said.

"There's a storm scene in King Lear and it started raining once and it rained quite hard. There can be lots of synergy."

Weather conditions are looking quite favourable as the company returns for two evenings of comedy Twelfth Night at Kirk's Reservoir from Boxing Day.

This is Ozact's 12^th year performing at Kirk's Reservoir - the company's first production, The Tempest in 1997, was in Ballarat's lakeside gardens.

Each season will take in between 25-30 locations, each location becoming a character in effect itself.

Mr Widdop said this had created a relaxed picnic and barbecue culture on each stop of the tour making for both a novel and more accessible way for people to access Shakespeare come to life.

"It's really novel for (audiences) and quite difference. Locations are real and we try to match the location with the play," Mr Widdop said.

"I consider Kirk's gardens relatively one of the hidden gems in Ballarat. It's beautiful there and hilly, so you're immediately presented with different backdrops...Our plays really make a connection with the natural world."

Twelfth Night is one of Mr Widdop's personal Shakespeare favourites.

This is a tale of what Mr Widdop said was filled with mistaken identities and complexities of love with a side order of mischief: Orsino loves Olivia (who will not give him the time of day), Olivia loves Viola (who she thinks is a boy) and Viola loves Orsino (who dies not know she is a girl).

And do not forget the swashbuckling duels.

Ozact's casts are traditionally Federation University performing arts graduates, in a tilt to the company's origins.

Ozact's Twelfth Night is at Kirk's Reservoir Park gardens, December 26-27 from 6.30pm. Bookings: ozact.com.

Twelfth Night will tour until April.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Have you signed up to The Courier's variety of news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in Ballarat.