As You Like It

Dawn McAndrews Director	Dan Bilodeau Set Designer	Sydney Enthoven Asst. Stage Manager	Madelaine Foster Props Supervisor
Michelle Handley Costume Designer	Dominique Nadeau Stage Manager	SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobal Lighting Designer	Cameron Sarchi Asst. Stage Manager

Rew Tippin Sound Designer

Sally Wood Fight Director

Cast

A.J. Baldwin Duke Freida	Christopher Blonski Oliver, A Lord	Mark S. Cartier Adam, Corin, First Lord
Robbie Harrison Touchstone	Rebecca Ho Celia	Tracie Lane Amiens, Audrey

Zack Lopez Roa Orlando	Katie Mitchell Phebe, Second Lord	Christopher Joel Onken Duke Senior, LeBeau
Tommy Vest Charles, Silvius, A Lord	Michael Wood Jaques	Jaine Ye Rosalind

From the Director

To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of the trouser role plays. I’ve always found it frustrating that the women characters go on a journey of self-discovery only to end up back in the position to find eternal happiness in the arms of a man. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the world must be peopled, but the agency lacking always frustrated me. Even the glimmer of fighting back in Taming of the Shrew, seemed superfluous. But at least those two—Petruchio and Katarina, seem to find both a truce and seem to genuinely fall for each other…as equals.

So, why direct As You Like It? I guess because it feels like the play most relevant in Shakespeare’s Canon for our modern audience. As You Like It is a play designed to please. There’s an abundance of songs (though we have trimmed them a bit), quotable bits, a wrestling match, clever word-play, and a slew of weddings in the final scene. And yet, because characters’ lives are at stake in court and country, the play throws into sharp relief relationships on which lives depend. Friendships in As You Like It are life-sustaining, fierce, and unchanging. We see and hear of friends’ sacrifices from the start: old Adam abandons security for Orlando’s sake; “loving lords” follow the ousted Duke to the Forest of Arden. When Rosalind is banished by her Aunt, Celia rallies instantly: “do not seek …/ To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out.” Such commitment among friends spans differences of gender, class, age, and origin. Before the play’s end, Rosalind will direct the behavior of lovers, a father, a cousin, and a host of homespun characters. She’s made a world as she likes it and charges us, among other things, to do the same. She is in charge of her agency and her future.

As the characters wander the Forest of Arden, so too do we. Arden is a forest which – by its diverse trees, flowing rivers, coastline– we know to be all places and no place at once. This is part of its magic; it is a setting not just for Rosalind’s self-discovery, but our own. Part of this self-discovery is that of gender and sexuality. Shakespeare himself disrupts the gender binary with a man playing a woman pretending to be a man who then plays a woman.

Having a bad day? Take a walk in the woods. Each time we take a walk in nature we come out better. Shakespeare certainly knew the transformative power of the wilderness, too. The plot of As You Like It is a profound journey into a renewing exile. It is about finding oneself through words and pastoral-fueled self-exploration.