Bethany explores unique staging in 'As You Like It'

Much of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” takes place in the woods. And director Emily Kimball is lucky enough to stage it in the Sigurd Lee Theatre which, for the year, has been transformed into a unique space that provides a bit of a playground for such a play.

While the stage located between two sections of seating in a court-like configuration has necessitated a new vocabulary beyond the usual “upstage/downstage” and “stage right/stage left,” it has done so in wonderfully exciting ways, Kimball said.

What adds to the fun is a play she calls a “pastoral comedy” that is intentionally lacking a strong storyline and focused on relationships.

“There’s a plot at the beginning and there’s certainly things that happen to people, but it’s all just relational,” she said. Within the four couples, one starts in love, one meets in the woods, one has one member in love who doesn’t know if their love is reciprocated. These differences help differentiate their stories.

“What I love about this is that the story itself is about escaping, it’s about leaving court, it’s about casting off burdens. It’s just going into the woods with your friends and watching young people fall in love.”

And with a certain amount of voyeurism involved — both for the audience and other characters — the unique configuration adds to the fun for designers as well as directors and actors.

“Putting the stage in the middle of the house has really reaped some fantastic artistic rewards,” said Peter Bloedel, who directed his original “What Child Is This” last fall to be immersive, with projections on all walls of the theater. He serves as scenic designer for “As You Like It” and was called on to bring some of those same characteristics to the setting.

“It has some limitations though. For instance, you can’t put any walls up on the stage because they would block the acting for either one side or the other. But we have found some great ways to build on the scenic ideas from each previous show.”

Stairs originally used in “Pirates of Penzance” bring actors in from one side, while a two-story structure on the opposite side has been transformed into a huge tree with the addition of carved Styrofoam. There are even stairs built into the tree for bringing in actors from unexpected locations, Kimball said.

As a little extra fun, one row of seating has been removed to allow actors to move across the theater when engaged in a chase. It also brings the actors and story right to the audience members in that immersive way.

The woods is almost a character in “As You Like It,” Kimball said, but differs from woods in shows like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” where they are almost magical.

“There’s not really magic in this show. It’s just people,” she said. “But certainly the forest (has) transformative properties for those who dwell within the woods.”

That trait, along with woodsy decoration, are handy when Rosalind and her cousin come across Orlando, who Rosalind has a crush on but has been too tongue-tied to speak with. When the pair go into disguise as “humble folk,” however, that layer of protection makes her feel freer to be more assertive.

When Rosalind in disguise offers to pretend to be a woman to cure Orlando of his lovesickness, it allows her to express herself with less fear of opening herself up. It also brings an opportunity for Shakespeare’s bit of comedy.

Kimball said some sections of “As You Like It” are more prose and less poetry, but took advantage of the opportunity to collaborate with other departments. As she did with a tea party for “Pride and Prejudice,” with April being both National Poetry Month and the accepted month of both Shakespeare’s birth and death, she reached out to the Bethany English Department.

Selected poetry from students will be included in the show program and published in the college’s Inkwell Literary Magazine and its website, Kimball said.

Music theater student Natalie Hennig was asked early on if she would be interested in composing and performing some songs in the show. Hennig has tweaked some lyrics for them to make more sense and has worked with musicians who will be performing on fun period instruments.

Lastly, Kimball, who also serves as costume designer for the show, has managed to mix in some sound and look of the 1970s in those aspects of the show. These things came together, she suggested, because she grew up during the change from the one-function VHS tape to DVD, which was capable of many extra features.

And now she’s bringing all of that to the theater.