Stephen HeatleyWhen I imagine the productions at the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare's time, I think of our present day three-ring circus, with people everywhere and a real excitement built around the event of seeing a play and being seen in the audience. It is with this in mind that we have fashioned our production in the usually-proscenium world of the Frederic Wood Theatre. It is my hope that we will experience some of the "up close and personal" nature of the audience/actor relationship which would have been the case in the 16th century. At that time, you would have paid a lot of money for the privilege of sitting on the stage and watching the actors sweat.  
 
Shakespeare has fascinated scholars for over four centuries. His work has also galvanized playgoers for that long. Few lovers of the works of the Bard are without opinion about how his work should be dealt with. In my own undergraduate experience there was such a fierce disagreement about the study of Shakespeare that the "Drama Division" broke away from its parent department to form its own unit. We refer to that war, of which I am a child, as the Great English/Drama Split of '72. Theatre artists are always looking for and finding new ways to dress up Shakespearešs delicious characters and words to fashion their relevance for their own time and place. As a student I remember very clearly a production of THE TEMPEST that sat about fifty people around the altar of an old church in downtown Toronto, and the truly sensual experience of the smell of the peeling of an orange behind me as part of the drama. My first viewing of MEASURE FOR MEASURE set that play on a Caribbean island. My own first crack at Shakespeare, on the encouragement of the Artistic Director, was a TWELFTH NIGHT that was set in a Ukrainian settlement in Saskatchewan in 1927. Amazingly, Shakespeare's work allows us to make these big choices, for better and for worse, and his work seems to stand up. If we have done our work as interpreters well, the audience should see the play in a new light. It is this quality that keeps me returning to see the same play many times over. I hope our particular approach to AS YOU LIKE IT is one of the "for better" experiences for you.

We think AS YOU LIKE IT was written around 1598. It is now 2001 and this story of love, lust, lifestyle, wrestling, sibling rivalry, adventure and music is still relevant.  There continues to be excellent mileage in watching a woman pose as a man (and test out her new love in the meantime), and enjoying the spectre of city folk grappling with a rural existence. The challenges of Mr. Shakespeare's play provide an excellent training opportunity for both our acting students and our design and production students.  It has been a great privilege to tackle this work as my own maiden voyage as a UBC faculty member. It has been a bonus to do so with such a committed group of actors and production personnel, a gifted student costume designer, two of our illustrious design alumni and the tireless efforts of my colleagues in the Theatre Programme. Enjoy.

Stephen Heatley

 

 

Jaques and the Wounded Stag

 

 

 

 

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