{"id":2265,"date":"2025-12-26T12:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T17:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/?p=2265"},"modified":"2025-12-26T12:54:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T17:54:05","slug":"spring-2026-as-you-like-it-entry-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/spring-2026-as-you-like-it-entry-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring 2026 “As You Like It” Entry #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Now go we in content to liberty, and not to banishment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reread As You Like It<\/em> for the first time in years when the audition for this job came through, and Celia\u2019s line at the close of the play\u2019s first act was what initially galvanised me to want to be a part of this production. I\u2019d encountered As You Like It<\/em> before, however never with a great amount of (God forgive me) enthusiasm – it isn\u2019t Shakespeare\u2019s plottiest play, or his goriest, or his most magical. After that first re-read I felt almost ashamed to have been so ambivalent towards it as it may, I would argue, be Shakespeare\u2019s most romantic play, however Me-In-October is not yet aware of this. Me-In-October is instead thinking that it\u2019s the play with all the monologues that remind her of drama school auditions – and no one who\u2019s gone through those wants to be reminded of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But speaking of first acts, I should begin this properly. The above \u2018me\u2019 in question is, well, me – Grace, 26 years old, and originally from Middlesbrough in the North East of England. As an incredibly clumsy child, my parents enrolled me in ballet classes to try and improve my balance and co-ordination; ballet turned into tap, tap turned into Saturday morning theatre groups, and before anyone really knew it I was eighteen years old with suitcase in hand moving to London to try and be an actor. Several years down the line and here I am, doing just that! The beautiful irony of this is that I am, of course, still as uncoordinated now as I was back then, except now I have a degree to break my fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You join us on a particularly rainy afternoon in Brixton, smack in the middle of our first week of rehearsals – Al, Benjy, Joanna, Sam, and I, the intrepid troupe taxed with bringing As You Like It <\/em>from page to stage. Five actors, no director, twenty-or-so characters, as many props and costumes as we can fit in a 22kg suitcase, and five weeks until we head out stateside to perform at venues from Indiana to Austin. The word \u2018daunted\u2019 has never come out of my mouth as often as it has these first few days. I\u2019m a newbie to AFTLS, and I\u2019ve never worked in an environment like this before; self-direction and collaboration and relying on your fellow actors to really build up whatever this weird and wonderful process may take the form of. Not only that, but we\u2019re staring down the barrel of some of Shakespeare\u2019s wittiest, wordiest, and most wonderfully written characters, with so much to unravel and discover in the text and the relationships – as well as how in the world we\u2019re going to do that whilst also, in several cases, playing both characters involved in the relationship in question. Sometimes at the same time. My head\u2019s spinning all over again just writing this, but the reason why I wanted to do this so badly was because of how intimidating I found the prospect of it all – if something scares you just the right amount, all the more reason to sprint towards it screaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be said, I\u2019m thrilled I sprinted. It\u2019s been a wildly positive start, and I\u2019m already immensely proud of the rehearsal room we\u2019re cultivating together. It\u2019s a room I look forward to walking into every morning, one where we solve problems not by simplifying things but by leaning into the complexities and seeing how best we can unknot ourselves from the tangle we make. Our lack of director may seem slightly bonkers at first, but it\u2019s fascinating to see what springs from us just getting a scene on its feet immediately and working our way through it, via whatever Shakespeare leaves for us on the page blended with wherever our instincts may steer us. Our first proper day was spent running the whole play, beginning to end, with zero preparation, just to see what would come to the surface. It\u2019s mad. It\u2019s exhilarating. It\u2019s brilliant, and I\u2019m having a blast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And beyond just the work, the five of us feel like a really spectacular team. Truly, if you have people around you who can carry you through a 5:30am alarm for appointments at the US embassy, they\u2019re people that are worth putting your trust in. We\u2019re all vastly different individuals – in approach to the work, in life and perspectives, even in experience working with AFTLS – but we\u2019ve gotten each other few a fair share of challenges already and I look forward to seeing what the next ones we\u2019re facing will be. Today we tackled the wrestling match in Act 1 – which, in our version, sees Sam doubling as Orlando and Charles and, therefore, having a boxing match against himself – and had our first deep-dive into the music of the show; the extremities of focus and laughter and silliness and ingenuity and just sheer joy have all been in full swing. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get very far at all without that last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As You Like It<\/em> is a tonally fascinating play – it\u2019s pastoral, but also at times a parody of pastoral, and the main character is a woman but also a man but also a woman-playing-a-man-playing-a-woman, and it\u2019s a love story and maybe even a musical but also there\u2019s war and hatred and bad poetry and identity politics and queerness and, naturally, sheep. To find the joy in all that variation, and so much joy at that, is something I\u2019m grateful for and look forward to us diving into deeper, even as we\u2019re thinking about how best to draw out some of the darker aspects of the play. I\u2019d reassure you we weren\u2019t going too<\/em> dark by telling you all about the mouth trumpet\/kazoo duet, but I fear that may be giving the game away too much. Like all of Shakespeare\u2019s comedies, that vein of darkness can be found easily if you look in the right places; tyranny, murder, fratricide, refugees, it\u2019s a hard tightrope to walk and still keep your audience certain that it\u2019ll all work out alright in the end. And it does, in spades – As You Like It<\/em> ends with (spoiler alert) no less than four marriages! But then again, when so much of the play is about duality, it makes sense for us as actors\/directors\/designers\/musicians\/stage managers\/candlestick-makers to feel that duality just as much as the characters do. Throughout this whole adventure there will be good days, and hard days, and even days we will likely neglect to share with this blog entirely, but much like the courtiers venturing into the unknown of Arden, I\u2019m certain we\u2019ll be changed by them. I truly can\u2019t wait to see where this particular liberty might lead us – it feels like somewhere special already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS – one of my favourite parts of mounting a new project is creating a character playlist. I love using music as a way into a character\u2019s state of mind, or to explore their tastes or circumstances, plus it\u2019s nice to have a vibe-appropriate warm-up playlist to hand. Hopefully this will work in this format (I am typically something of a tech disaster\u2026) but if you care to have a listen to the music I\u2019ll be using to inspire my spin on Rosalind, a link should be available here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/1nnViaCPfpWQfaGSpgVkQ6?si=xCl_5aQNQRKNCAj9EADEaQ&pi=SxLDk14wR-uSr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Now go we in content to liberty, and not to banishment.\u201d I reread As You Like It for the first time in years when the audition for this job came through, and Celia\u2019s line at the close of the play\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47487],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2265"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2268,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265\/revisions\/2268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}