12:23 p.m. 22 January 2002
Almost time. Two days, and we're up. I've finally finished my director's notes for the program. Gives some sort of sense of finality to it. It's really done. This is it.
My bio is simply: Ginny (director) is a fourth year English major and Psychology minor who loves her friends and family very much. This production is, in some sense, her love letter to Shakespeare. She is not a wombat, no matter what the newspapers say.
Here's what I'm writing. It's the best I can do to sum up this play.
“All the world’s a stage,” As You Like It’s Jaques tells us towards the end of Act II, and “all the men and women merely players.” His famous analogy – world to stage and people to actors – is one of the best known lines Shakespeare ever wrote, rivaled only, most likely, by “to be or not to be.” And yet, by the end of the play, I find myself disagreeing with Jaques. All the world is not a stage. And, in fact, that is precisely the point.
In her epilogue, Rosalind tells us “I am not furnished like a beggar. Therefore, to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you.” Conjuring. Persuading, creating, magicking. To me, the process of creating a piece of theater is conjuring: getting an audience to believe in characters that never existed and to live, temporarily, in a world that is only imagined. The stage, like the forest of Arden where most of AYLI takes place, is a strange place outside of all real places. It is a place where an entire world is – for the space of three hours – created, and where the people in the story – Rosalind, Sir Oliver Martext, Hymen, Celia, Jaques, Frederick – people who don’t exist and never did, yet whom I nonetheless feel I know as well as friends, live in their entirety for the duration of the performance. Somehow, what was yesterday a bunch of wooden platforms bolted together, and what will be just a bunch of wooden platforms again tomorrow, for this time, this place, becomes an orchard, palace grounds, a forest. To take from a different play: somehow, before this night is over, we – audience, actors, crew, director, and Shakespeare – will have created a brave new world.
Not to say, of course, that our brave new Arden is exactly like the normal, everyday world. As You Like It is particularly interesting because it takes place in such a very unreal space. The forest of Arden – and the entire play – are in-between places. They are neither exactly court nor country, pastoral nor romance, real nor imagined. They exist in the space between everyday life and dreams, male and female, realism and fantasy. To me, one of the most important features of As You Like It is that it is, in many ways, about the impossible space of the imagination. Just as Rosalind becomes Ganymede – a transvestite character who is neither male nor female, but importantly in between the two – As You Like It shows, over and over, that what seem to be clear dividing lines are blurry, and comes out again and again neither here nor there. The title implies a sense of uncertainty: the play, the characters, and perhaps the meaning are all as you like it. Everything is in the eye of the beholder, and we can never be certain that one interpretation or another is the right one. In the forest of Arden, wise men are fools, men are women, kings are beggars, and yet, even so, none of them are what they seem to be. As You Like It eventually makes very clear, even while it simplifies and heightens life for the stage, that nothing is ever simple – not love, politics, or even dramatic genre. The heightened, unreal feeling of the play leads us to an understanding of the ways in which seemingly simple reality can be questioned and expanded, and boundaries can show themselves to be new categories altogether.
All the world, then, is not a stage. The world is the world: huge, complicated, funny,stressful, sad. So much of the world occurs when we aren’t looking. Takes us by horrible surprise, and makes us mourn for something we can’t even really comprehend. The world spends a lot of time not making sense or not going right, or at the very least seeming hopelessly confusing. Men and women are not merely players, but real beings who bleed and cry and love, who do stupid things and smart things, and who often don’t stop to think what will happen after they do them.
The world is not a stage. But all the stage is a world, and all the players on it men and women. They have their exits and their entrances, and all of them in their time play many parts. Parts that remind us of our own sorrow and joy, our own love and grief, age and youth, death and life. Parts that bring to life the things that seem so hard to understand in the world, and make them beautiful, funny, or sad. Parts that help us understand not the answers to the questions life makes us ask, but maybe help us ask those questions just a little better. Tonight, we are going to conjure up a world in miniature – a world that doesn’t exist, but still exists, in a way, more un-really, more truly, than the real one. And as we play our parts – all of us – I hope indeed that the play, at least, may please.
Almost time. Two days, and we're up. I've finally finished my director's notes for the program. Gives some sort of sense of finality to it. It's really done. This is it.
My bio is simply: Ginny (director) is a fourth year English major and Psychology minor who loves her friends and family very much. This production is, in some sense, her love letter to Shakespeare. She is not a wombat, no matter what the newspapers say.
Here's what I'm writing. It's the best I can do to sum up this play.
“All the world’s a stage,” As You Like It’s Jaques tells us towards the end of Act II, and “all the men and women merely players.” His famous analogy – world to stage and people to actors – is one of the best known lines Shakespeare ever wrote, rivaled only, most likely, by “to be or not to be.” And yet, by the end of the play, I find myself disagreeing with Jaques. All the world is not a stage. And, in fact, that is precisely the point.
In her epilogue, Rosalind tells us “I am not furnished like a beggar. Therefore, to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you.” Conjuring. Persuading, creating, magicking. To me, the process of creating a piece of theater is conjuring: getting an audience to believe in characters that never existed and to live, temporarily, in a world that is only imagined. The stage, like the forest of Arden where most of AYLI takes place, is a strange place outside of all real places. It is a place where an entire world is – for the space of three hours – created, and where the people in the story – Rosalind, Sir Oliver Martext, Hymen, Celia, Jaques, Frederick – people who don’t exist and never did, yet whom I nonetheless feel I know as well as friends, live in their entirety for the duration of the performance. Somehow, what was yesterday a bunch of wooden platforms bolted together, and what will be just a bunch of wooden platforms again tomorrow, for this time, this place, becomes an orchard, palace grounds, a forest. To take from a different play: somehow, before this night is over, we – audience, actors, crew, director, and Shakespeare – will have created a brave new world.
Not to say, of course, that our brave new Arden is exactly like the normal, everyday world. As You Like It is particularly interesting because it takes place in such a very unreal space. The forest of Arden – and the entire play – are in-between places. They are neither exactly court nor country, pastoral nor romance, real nor imagined. They exist in the space between everyday life and dreams, male and female, realism and fantasy. To me, one of the most important features of As You Like It is that it is, in many ways, about the impossible space of the imagination. Just as Rosalind becomes Ganymede – a transvestite character who is neither male nor female, but importantly in between the two – As You Like It shows, over and over, that what seem to be clear dividing lines are blurry, and comes out again and again neither here nor there. The title implies a sense of uncertainty: the play, the characters, and perhaps the meaning are all as you like it. Everything is in the eye of the beholder, and we can never be certain that one interpretation or another is the right one. In the forest of Arden, wise men are fools, men are women, kings are beggars, and yet, even so, none of them are what they seem to be. As You Like It eventually makes very clear, even while it simplifies and heightens life for the stage, that nothing is ever simple – not love, politics, or even dramatic genre. The heightened, unreal feeling of the play leads us to an understanding of the ways in which seemingly simple reality can be questioned and expanded, and boundaries can show themselves to be new categories altogether.
All the world, then, is not a stage. The world is the world: huge, complicated, funny,stressful, sad. So much of the world occurs when we aren’t looking. Takes us by horrible surprise, and makes us mourn for something we can’t even really comprehend. The world spends a lot of time not making sense or not going right, or at the very least seeming hopelessly confusing. Men and women are not merely players, but real beings who bleed and cry and love, who do stupid things and smart things, and who often don’t stop to think what will happen after they do them.
The world is not a stage. But all the stage is a world, and all the players on it men and women. They have their exits and their entrances, and all of them in their time play many parts. Parts that remind us of our own sorrow and joy, our own love and grief, age and youth, death and life. Parts that bring to life the things that seem so hard to understand in the world, and make them beautiful, funny, or sad. Parts that help us understand not the answers to the questions life makes us ask, but maybe help us ask those questions just a little better. Tonight, we are going to conjure up a world in miniature – a world that doesn’t exist, but still exists, in a way, more un-really, more truly, than the real one. And as we play our parts – all of us – I hope indeed that the play, at least, may please.
Labels: early modern, liminality, queer, spirit of the age, theatre, transvestism
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