By Christian Fernandez
The MFA Company of the MBU Shakespeare and Performance graduate program, the Motley Shakespeare Players, kicked off their season this year by premiering their first play, Shakespeare’s As You Like It at Blackfriars Playhouse. Since As You Like It is the company’s education play for touring, director Elizabeth Bernardo had to trim the play down into 45- minute and 1-hour versions. Despite having only a four-week rehearsal schedule, Bernardo’s’s leadership along with assistance from Professors Cohen, Davies, Bechtol and several American Shakespeare Center actors made the show a great success.
Bernardo said her biggest challenge was trimming the play, saying “it’s like tampering with a masterpiece.” She started by trimming the most antiquated references.Then, sadly, she realized she had to cut several of the play’s songs, jokes, and some instances of character development. Tyler Dale, who played Orlando, found such cuts especially difficult. “[Bernardo] did a phenomenal job capturing the spirit of the play in [just] 60 minutes,” said Dale, “but large cuts inevitably leave a lot of gaps for the actors to fill, and Orlando’s lines received some pretty substantial trimming.” However, Dale went on to explain that such challenges motivated him and the other actors to better understand the characters so they could adequately depict the characters in the shortened amount of time.
Ultimately, Bernardo edited the play to focus on the Rosalind-Orlando romance and Jaques’ memorable moments. In doing so, she hoped “to highlight the heart and humanity in the lead characters.” Bernardo and Dale hope that the most relatable, humorous aspects of the characters reach younger audiences and teach students that watching Shakespeare can be “a joyous act.”
As You Like It photography courtesy of Lauren Reed.
