“From Broadway to Shadowland, coast to coast, and stages all around the world, our voices join in the call: Theatre is back!” So writes Patricia A. Fitzpatrick, associate professor of Spanish at SUNY New Paltz, who is serving as interim chair of the Department of Theatre Arts during a “time of transition.” The restrictions on live performance that cramped the style of thespians everywhere during the height of the COVID pandemic have eased, and Theatre Arts at the college are back in full swing. You have one more weekend to enjoy the student production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, being performed at the beautiful McKenna Theatre on campus at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 3 through 5 and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 6. Tickets cost only $9 and can be ordered online at www.newpaltz.edu/fpa/theatre/productions/mainstage.
This sojourn in the transformative Forest of Arden is directed by visiting lecturer Isabel Smith-Bernstein, PhD, whose track record with the Utah Shakespeare Festival encompasses more than 20 productions over the past seven years. One of the courses she’s now teaching at SUNY New Paltz is Race and Gender in Performance, which makes As You Like It a natural candidate for reinterpretation. Smith-Bernstein calls Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy “a spiritual journey into a renewing exile…about finding love through words and through self-exploration…Part of this self-discovery is that of gender and sexuality.”
In Shakespeare’s time, of course, every one of his plays featured male actors cross-dressing as female characters, because female actors weren’t a thing. In his comedies especially, playing with gender identity is a feature, not a bug. Men often are called upon to play women masquerading as men in order to stay safe or accomplish a task. But a mere binary division of roles is so yesterday. In the contemporary theatrical landscape, reflecting society’s current grappling with complex issues of biological sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, plays like As You Like It present irresistible opportunities to play with casting decisions and multiply the layers of performative interpretation.
Says Smith-Bernstein, “Shakespeare already disrupted the gender binary with a man playing a woman pretending to be a man who then plays a woman, and we have simply pushed it further.” The casting of the SUNY production turns Orlando’s oppressive older brother Oliver into a sister, which, when Oliver ends up paired off with Aliena/Celia, emphasizes the lesbian overtones already implicit in the latter’s “sisterly” attachment to Rosalind at the outset of the play. No wonder Celia keeps complaining, however playfully, that Rosalind’s devotion to their friendship doesn’t match her own.
Also gender-swapped is the role of the court jester Touchstone. But the role is greatly truncated here, with the character of Audrey eliminated and the scenes of urbane, cynical Touchstone wooing the naïve shepherdess completely cut. Smith-Bernstein claims to have “shortened and rearranged Shakespeare’s text to emphasize the power of Arden,” and some of the omissions make sense. Touchstone, however, is one of the Bard’s great clowns, and audiences who love his wit may find themselves missing some familiar speeches on such subjects as husbands given horns.
Among the student performances, highlights include Khiara Richards as Celia/Aliena giving Rosalind’s insta-crush on Orlando an eloquent side-eye and Sean Walsh’s gravitas beyond his years as the melancholy Jacques, who gets to deliver one of the Bard’s most famous speeches, on the Seven Ages of Man. The cast also includes Tes Maxwell as Rosalind/Ganymede, Jennifer Marshall as Oliver, Veronica Thiel as Touchstone, Parker Howland as Orlando, Khalil Coates as Duke Frederick, Matt Doherty as Duke Senior, Allen Potter as Silvius, Kiana Duggan-Haas as Phoebe, William Reymann as Le Beau, Amiens and a Musician, Sumire Muratsu as a Lord and a Musician, Rae Ferrara as Charles and Corin, Noah Speek as Adam, Jocelyn Mejia, Kevin Maguire and Julia Dubinsky.
This is a sprightly production overall, punctuated by some of Shakespeare’s liveliest songs, set here to tunes originally composed for the Scranton Shakespeare Festival in 2018. The sets and costumes are models for how to spark an audience’s imagination on a limited budget.
More from the 2022/23 mainstage season
A staged reading of The Useful Citizen, a new musical by assistant professor of Musical Theatre Katya Stanislavskaya, kicked off the 2022/23 season of the Department of Theatre Arts at SUNY New Paltz. Here to whet your anticipation are some details about upcoming productions:
December 2-4, Parker Theatre:
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress by Alan Ball, directed by Jenna Sargent
This two-act comedy revolves around five bridesmaids (all wearing the same dress) who hide away from the reception within the sanctuary of the bedroom of the bride’s younger sister. Though all very different, these gals discover they have more in common than they think, including a shared disdain for the bride and a history with the same man.
March 3-5, 23-26, Parker Theatre:
Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Brittany Proia
Everybody is a modern riff on the 15th-century morality play Everyman. The title character is chosen from the cast by lottery at each performance, playing up the randomness of death and the universality of the human condition.
April 21-30, McKenna Theatre:
Bat Boy: The Musical by Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming & Laurence O’Keefe, directed by Catherine Doherty, musical direction by Katya Stanislavskaya
Bat Boy is an American comedy/horror rock musical based on a 1992 Weekly World News story about an alleged half-boy, half-bat, found in a cave in West Virginia and forced to adjust to life in small town full of narrow-minded residents.
Tickets for all SUNY New Paltz Department of Theatre Arts productions can be ordered online at www.newpaltz.edu/fpa/theatre/productions/mainstage.
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