Not sure what to expect from our OUDS production in the Playhouse? We caught up with the director, Christopher White, to talk about their creative process…
After four weeks of rehearsal, it still feels like we’ve only scratched the surface of As You Like It. It is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s most complex and demanding comedies, and so getting into the minds of the characters has been our goal from the start.
Our initial discussions centred around what the play was about. We isolated two vital strands that flow through As You Like It: love and broken families. The first is quite obvious, but the second less so. We realised that the major characters in the play lacked adequate father figures. Celia’s father is violent and controlling. Rosalind’s father left her behind to escape to Arden. Orlando and Oliver’s is dead. (And don’t even get us started on the complete lack of mothers).
Our discussion of family helped us to feed into our understanding of love in As You Like It. A major question is why Rosalind and Orlando fall in love so quickly. While it is impossible to understand exactly why anyone falls in love, a reasonable guess at one of the reasons has to be that they see their own reflection in the other — a confused young person with no parents around to help and few options left.
Love needs flirtation to fully blossom, and so an exercise we developed in the rehearsal room was the idea of playing the flirtation ‘game’. The ‘game’, played between Rosalind and Orlando, demands that the character try to conceal their true feelings, teasing with glances and physical touches but nothing overt enough to confirm the other person’s suspicions. It is this uncertainty, I believe, that gives the famous courtship scenes such energy, and that, I hope, has given the actors the ability to link their characters to their own experiences.
The prospect of using candlelight to aid the storytelling in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse has been one of the most exciting parts of directing As You Like It, and feeds into my aim of bringing out the contrast between the lighter and darker elements of the play. At the moment, however, we’re exposed to the elements in the President’s Garden in Magdalen College, Oxford, ahead of our run at the Sam Wanamaker next week. We couldn’t be performing in a more different venues. There are no candles in Oxford. The style of acting, of interaction with the audience, is radically different, and poses its own set of challenges. But the core of our work on character and relationships hasn’t changed, and that’s what, I hope, will stay with the cast throughout the tour.
As You Like It will play in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 12 August. Book Tickets