When
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
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