Duke: As You Like It

Join us for a rendering of one of Shakespeare’s most well-known comedies, As You Like It. This classic is a riff on the pastoral genre, where figures of lowly means and meager formal education offer their social but not emotional betters an unencumbered understanding of the world in which to take solace, find refuge, and even fall in love.

Shakespeare’s status as a working playwright, expected by his fans and company to create new and imaginative works, is evident in As You Like It. The main action of the play takes place in the forest of Arden, which functions as a fantastical woodlands featuring both lions and oak trees and as a wilderness entangled in political and social conflict. As such, the tensions of economic and political struggle and gender roles that marked the early 1940s is the backdrop for our staging.

We have assembled a company comprised of students from all four ages of student life (first-year to senior) at Duke and have been blessed with the expertise of British actor Jonathan Cullen during our rehearsal process.

The running time is 120 minutes with a 10-minute intermission.