by Rod Jones
The Ļć½¶Šć University School of Theatre will stage an adapted production of William Shakespeareās āAs You Like Itā April 7 through 10.
The production will be staged in the Burg Theatre in Kirkpatrick Fine Arts Center. Show times are 8 p.m. April 7, 8 and 9; and 2 p.m. April 9 and 10. Tickets are available online at or by calling 405-208-5227.
The production at Ļć½¶Šć coincides with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeareās death.
āAs You Like Itā is considered by many to be one of Shakespeareās most inventive comedies. The heroine, Rosalind, is praised as one of his most inspiring characters and has more lines than any other of Shakespeareās female characters.
The story: Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl dresses as boy to teach boy to seduce girl. Girl gets boy.
Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke, falls in love with Orlando, the disinherited son of one of the dukeās friends. When she is banished from the court by her usurping uncle, Rosalind switches genders and as Ganymede travels with her loyal cousin and the jester Touchstone to the Forest of Arden, where her father and his friends live in exile. Observations on life and love follow including one of Shakespeareās most famous speeches when Jaques reminds the audience, āAll the worldās a stage, and all the men and women merely playersā¦ā
Stephen Wrentmore, an international theater director and Ļć½¶Šć professor who adapted the play, says his production will be a celebration of love in all its complexity.
āThe play is a joyful romantic comedy,ā Wrentmore said. āItās ridiculously silly with intentional confusion through disguises and misunderstanding. It features a moral core where love and good triumphs over hate and evil.ā
For Ļć½¶Šćās adaptation, Wrentmore reduced the scriptās run time to slightly more than 1 hour and 30 minutes to be what he calls a ācontemporary rom-com.ā He also reset the play to the Bronx in 1979, and one scene into a mythical forest somewhere in Appalachia where love is released.
āWe move from the hip-hoppinā hectic city to the calm of the pastoral. Our brilliant design team has created a delightful and extraordinary universe for the actors to play in,ā he added.
Beyond āAs You Like It,ā the School of Theatre professors are also working on projects to recognize Shakespeare, including Kate Brennan leading staged readings of all of his works in chronological order with Shakespeare in the Park and D. Lance Marsh producing a āDay of Sonnetsā on the Ļć½¶Šć campus later this spring.
