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“As You Like It”: Shakespeare in the Parks
September 28, 2014 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
FREE
Hope Academy teaching artist, Tonya Lynn (Musical Theater Workshop Acting & Shakespeare Coaching), is playing Audrey in Shakespeare in the Parks’ performance of “As You Like It.” There are 3 performances this weekend but let’s all try to go to the one on Sunday afternoon. It’s FREE. It’s OUTSIDE. And it will be a BLAST seeing Tonya and all of our other friends from Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks (we’re looking at you, Adam Rutledge and Andrew Miller!). So bring a blanket and we will see you at Frick Park at 2 pm!
If you come early (1 pm) you can see a 45 min kid’s version of the play by Falstaff’s Fellows.
Click here for more information about all of the performances of “As You Like It,” and read these lovely director’s notes, by Lisa Ann Goldsmith, to get you excited.
Director’s Notes for “As You Like It”
So many people producing Shakespeare plays these days think that there must be an original angle, or a deep-seated theme, or an unusual setting, or something offbeat about the production in order for modern audiences to relate to it. My favorite thing about the Bard’s work has always been how incredibly accessible it is! Human feelings have not changed in 400 years, and Shakespeare’s characters are as human as you get. “Love is merely a madness,” says Rosalind. And indeed, that has not changed throughout history either. The mad interplay between the sexes is as old as the Earth, and is seldom displayed as beautifully and hilariously as in “As You Like It.” We get it—every relationship in the play is familiar to us, even when they don’t make sense. And so if we do understand these people as well as we do, it seems superfluous to me to gild the lily. This play takes place in the forest of Arden; where better to perform it than in the beautiful parks where we live? As Duke Senior so wisely observes, being within nature does indeed help us “finde tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.” Let the text stand on its own, in the natural setting where it belongs. It has been a joyful ride for us—we welcome you into our world. Enjoy!
—Lisa Ann Goldsmith, Director
