We opened the show last week to packed houses. It was thrilling to see our audiences get excited about Shakespeare. I hear the play may have even inspired a few students to try their hand at acting.

As I was chatting with one student after the show he said, “Emily, I really liked it.” He paused. “May I make a comment though?” “Of course” I answered. “I found the play really sexist.”  And thus began a truly amazing conversation. I told this student that I absolutely agreed with him. It is sexist. The fact that (spoiler alert!) Phebe has to marry Silvius against her will and that Rosalind greets her father and soon-to-be husband with the phrase, “To you I give myself, for I am yours,” is difficult to swallow in 2015.

There are plays, once considered progressive, that would be divisive if put on the stage today. Some consider West Side Story to be one: a play well-beloved, but in its original form portrays ugly stereotypes. Luckily, composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, of In the Heights and Hamilton fame, rewrote much of the play to include contemporary portrayals of Puerto Ricans grounded in truth. We do not have such luck with Shakespeare, whose plays are stuck in a time when women were not even permitted to go to the theatre alone, lest they be mistaken for prostitutes. It’s shocking to look at what happens to Phebe at the end of As You Like It and consider Shakespeare progressive, but he was for his time.

Countless scholars have devoted themselves to analyzing sexism in Shakespeare’s plays. Their results are all over the map. Some scholars are certain Shakespeare was challenging the status quo, others feel he was poking fun at progressives who dared to believe that women could hold more power. I choose to believe the former.

While what happens to Phebe at the end of the play is less than ideal, I take my cues about Shakespeare’s intentions from the rest of the play. Shakespeare chooses to put a female at the helm of As You Like It. Rosalind takes her future into her own hands and schools her potential life-partner in the ways of a true lover. To take things a step further,  Shakespeare marries two men onstage (Ganymede and Orlando) and gives a man (Ganymede) the line “I [love] no woman.” While the audience knows Ganymede is Rosalind in disguise, the characters in the scene do not. All of this points in the direction of Shakespeare challenging the status quo. Can a woman be in charge of a relationship? Can two men fall in love? Shakespeare answers yes.

This does not negate that Phebe is forced to marry a man she does not love. It’s upsetting. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do this play. Not only does it offer so much other food-for-thought, in shying away from problematic plays we close ourselves off from difficult conversations. We should take the opportunity to begin a dialogue about sexism in Shakespeare, in contemporary theatre, and in the 21st century as a whole. There is a difference though, between problematic plays and plays that purport repugnant ideas about gender, race, and sexual orientation.  Those ones, as far as I’m concerned, should never see the light of day.

We still have three more performances to go. If you haven’t had a chance to see the play, or want another shot, visit our website to reserve your tickets.

Like all good comedies, As You Like It addresses social norms and encourages audiences to question the status quo. In this seemingly light comedy (that most people remember as the “one where she goes to the forest dressed like a guy”) Shakespeare makes his voice heard on the most pressing topics of his day- gender roles, land grabbing, and censorship. Using traditions defined by the Italian Comedy, Shakespeare brings universal truths to light through laughter. Jonathan Swift, Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame, and Stephen Colbert clearly took note.

While the entire play is full of terrific food for thought, three characters are shining examples of Shakespeare’s subversive ideas. The court fool Touchstone delivers some of the most glaring social commentary in the play. With his name, which references an actual touchstone- an object that tells us whether or not something is real or fake- Shakespeare sends us the not-so-subtle message to heed the truth that Touchstone speaks. Since the days of the court jester, the clown has played the role of truth-teller. Spreading subversive ideas gets a lot easier when you can shrug these ideas off as a silly joke.  One of Touchstones most enduring lines, “The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly” harkens to this point exactly.

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We are about two weeks away from opening night. That means scripts are gone, costumes are being adjusted, lights are being hung, and tickets are being sold! It’s an exciting and busy time for us.

Recently, I was lucky enough to get some photos from Technical Director Charles Raffetto that show the evolution of the set for As You Like It. Students in the afternoon program in technical theatre are working tirelessly to bring the Forest of Arden to life on the Williston stage. I managed to sneak into the costume shop to grab a few pictures of the original creations costume designer Ilene Goldstein has made for the show. Here are a few snapshots of our progress.

It would never occur to me that someone might think I could walk into a rehearsal for As You Like It and know everything there is to know about a scene. But that’s exactly what happened a few weeks back. We were working a joke- one that is particularly complicated. (Without giving too much away it has to do with mustard, pancakes, and the Queen.) We discussed the historical references in the joke, which goes on for about half a page, line by line. At a certain point I asked the group if there were any questions. One student said, with an incredulous look on their face, “Yes…how do you know all that?”

I have lived with Shakespeare all my life. Yet, even still, when I pick up a play I haven’t read in a while much of the meaning eludes me. I am not afraid to admit this.  I actually want people to know how much I don’t know. This might sound odd coming from an educator (aren’t we supposed to know everything?) but I think it’s the key to helping others fall in love with Shakespeare as much as I have. We shy away from Shakespeare because it’s a little scary. We are afraid of being the only person in the room who doesn’t “get it” when in fact, most of us don’t get it. But once we get over the fact that none of us gets it, we can embark on the task of getting it.

In that spirit, I shared with my students exactly how I “know all that:” I spend about two hours with my script before each rehearsal going through the words line by line. I have two versions of the play with me (Norton Critical and Folger), a Shakespeare Glossary, my own research, a pencil, my script, and the internet. Between these tools I can guarantee that I will do my job in understanding what every character is saying. This information passes from me to the actors who then get to put their own spin on things. And that’s exactly what happened after we figured out what the business was with the pancakes and the mustard.

While As You Like It doesn’t open until mid-April, actors, dancers, musicians and designers are already hard at work bringing the play to life. It takes time to tackle Shakespeare’s language, build a set that will transport audiences to the forest of Arden, and to learn music and dances that will bring the spirit of the forest to life. (If you are wondering what dancers and musicians are doing in a Shakespeare play, As You Like It may be the closest thing Shakespeare gets to a musical. Luckily our trusty creative team from Urinetown, music director Joshua Harper and choreographer Debra Vega, are on board! More on that in another post.)

Below you will find a few snapshots of the actors working to bring the play to life through blocking and a sneak peak of the set which is being built as we speak.

We open this Friday and as we head into the last couple of rehearsals, the students are all working hard to tie up loose ends, and make sure the backstage work is fully integrated with the onstage action. I took some video and wanted to share it here so that you can see what we have been up recently in order to get these one acts ready for our audiences. Much of it is behind the scenes, but I’ve included a tiny teaser for 2 of the 4 plays. So get your tickets and we’ll see you this weekend!

Located within the deepest depths of Scott Hall is an integral part of making theater magic at the Williston Northampton School. I am talking, of course, about the amazing Costume Shop. 

The costume shop at Williston consists of two rooms that are located under the main theater facility and technical production shop in Scott Hall. Ilene Goldstein is the costume designer for the Williston Theater and is the main presence within the Costume Shop. She runs an after school program within the Technical Theater afternoon program option where students learn sewing techniques in order to help create the costumes that are used in Williston productions. Ilene, however, can often be found in the costume shop most hours of the day working tirelessly on the amazing costumes that grace the Williston stage.

 Within the first room of the Costume shop anything from sewing machines to ironing boards and even a washing machine can be found and are used in order to make the costumes for the Williston Theater the best they can possibly be. In the second room is the Costume Closet, in which almost all of the costumes Williston has ever used reside. It is here that the journey of two new costume designers within the Theater Lab program begins. 

Roya Mostafavi and I are the two costume designers for the one act theater productions taking place this winter within the Theater Lab program. It is our job as costume designers to know the visions of all four directors, and to craft costumes that are suitable to the place, time, season, setting and theme of the director’s productions. Both Roya and I have only rudimentary sewing skills, so it is incredibly fortunate that we are not personally making the costumes from scratch for our various productions. Instead we must both dive into the many aisles and shelves within Williston’s vast costume shop and pull anything and everything that we feel would suit and fit an actor and their character. 

Gathering the costumes for all four of the plays being produced as part of Theater Lab has been a very collaborative process. The directors, Ilene, Roya and I have all had to come together in order to bring to fruition the visions of each director. Whether it was improvising a full clown costume or trying to find clothes to fit a high powered New York lawyer; the process of finding costumes for all four shows has certainly kept us all on our toes. Even within the extensive collection of the Williston Costume Shop some items have been too difficult to find. Luckily, just a five minute walk from the theater lives a small thrift shop by the name of The Parsons’s Closet. It was here the Roya and I were able to buy many necessary parts for the various costumes we were working on. Through the many on and off campus resources, and the amazing guidance of Ilene, Roya and I have almost completed every costume for the Theater Lab productions, and I must say I am very proud of our results thus far. 

Overall, it has been a very fun process having input into the costume designs of a theater production. When acting I never felt truly in character until I put on my costume, so it has been a great privilege to be able to create the vessel that will carry all of the actors into the imaginary world of their shows.  – Noah Jackson ’15

It would be naive to think that Shakespeare’s plays, and his comedies in particular, are not challenging for audiences. The language itself is foreign and the humor based on events that happened nearly 500 years ago. Directors are willing to put these difficulties aside because we are drawn to the way Shakespeare understands the human condition, but we  can’t forget for a moment that audiences will never understand the truths Shakespeare illuminates unless actors have a clear vision of the entire world of the play.

In As You Like It, which is admittedly a play about ideas, it is even more critical. What do Touchstone’s jokes even mean? Why is Duke Senior such a nice guy? Why is Corin so bitter? Why is Jaques obsessed with Touchstone? Our actors must know the answers to these questions—amongst a host of others.

Luckily, Shakespeare scholar and UMass professor Dr. Adam Zucker came to illuminate some of these mysteries. His presentation, which was weighted equally with humor and practical advice, gave our actors terrific context in which to place Shakespeare’s play and characters.

Dr. Zucker explained the importance of the pastoral poem to As You Like It, the role of the clown in Shakespeare’s plays, and the subversive politics presented in the play. No presentation on Elizabethan England would be complete without a discussion of patriarchy which, in As You Like It, impacts relationships between brothers as well as between sexes.

After Dr. Zucker’s visit, the cast embarked on starting character work: the time when actors get to sort out who their characters are, what has shaped their vision of the world, and what they want most in life.

Armed with a new context in which to look at their roles, the characters became living, breathing, three-dimensional human beings, not sketches of characters written centuries ago.

Through support from the Williston+ program, which connects the Williston community with professors at the Five Colleges,  we were able to host some of the Pioneer Valley’s most creative theatre minds in our Play Production course last Friday. The class, which focuses on directing for the stage, explores what it means to be a theatre artist and offers students a chance to develop an artistic perspective while examining how that perspective adds to contemporary theatrical practice. Daniel Kramer, Chair of the Smith Theatre Department and Associate Artistic Director of Chester Theatre, Priscilla Kane Hellweg, Executive Artistic Director of Holyoke based Enchanted Circle Theater and Hampshire College professor, and Eric Henry Sanders, playwright and Hampshire college instructor, engaged students in a lively, honest, and passionate conversation on these very topics.

When I set out to gather this group together my hope was that they could bestow terrific practical knowledge about directing to our students.  Mr. Kramer brings years of experience directing award-winning theatre, Ms. Kane Hellweg’s nationally recognized  community-engaged theatre company has been transforming lives for nearly forty years, and Mr. Sanders’ plays have been produced all over the world.  Who better than this group to share the how-to of directing  with my students?

What unfolded was even better than that. The visit evolved from a panel to a robust conversation between students, teacher, and visitors that examined the essence of why we do theatre. It all came down to something very simple- storytelling.  Mr. Kramer spoke of the potential for theatre to create “empathetic imaginations” when actors inhabit characters unlike themselves, Ms. Kane Hellweg discussed how her work creates a permeable boundary between audience and performers that empowers audiences to become actors in their own narrative, Mr. Sanders conveyed the inherent power that storytelling has to change the way we examine our world when we include multiple perspectives. They agreed the keys to finding success in the theatre- and by success we are not talking about how lucrative our work is, but rather how transformative the work is for audiences and artists- is a spirit of giving. Without prompting, these visitors spoke a truth I hold very dear about creating and performing theatre- you must connect, collaborate, and give through the act of storytelling. Without these elements your piece will not touch hearts, change minds, or even entertain.

In reflecting on the panel, my students had a renewed sense of the importance of theatre, but more specifically a more clear picture of why they are so passionate about it. One student said “It is important to keep perspective on the reasons… you do something in order to have clarity in your work.” With that spirit they headed off to lead rehearsals for Theatre Lab, a collection of student-directed one-acts to be performed in February.