“How they liked it, The challenges of recreating the Elizabethan staging conditions of As You Like It”,
Résumé
One of the most frequently performed plays in the canon, As You Like It presents a real challenge to the performance historian. This paper proposes to concentrate on productions that have attempted to integrate some aspects of early modern stagecraft, namely the Globe’s stage and auditorium, and all male casting.
To date the Bankside Globe has already produced two versions of As You Like It, a play that was probably first performed in the newly built original Globe in 1599. Both productions (1998 and 2009) made use of “original practices”, including a relatively bare stage and recreated Elizabethan clothing, but also made many concessions to modern practice. Cheek by Jowl’s epoch-making production, directed by Declan Donnellan (1991), took the all-male cast paradigm into a direction completely different from that of the Globe’s all-male Twelfth Night production.
Examining and comparing these three productions will make it possible to shed light on the way space and casting enhance the meta-dramatic devices the play incorporates while adding resonance to the manifold aspects of character development and social scrutiny it provides.