AS YOU LIKE IT

By William Shakespeare 
adapted by Owen Horsley 

As You Like it is a play about exploration - of identity, of love, and of the self. The journey into the Forest of Arden becomes a metaphor for leaving home, stepping into the wider world, and discovering who you truly are.

​

Shakespeare’s pastoral comedies celebrate freedom: the freedom to question, to experiment, and to explore gender, sexuality, and love. At the heart of the play lies a tension between two worlds - the court and the forest. The court represents constraint, expectation, and adherence to the status quo, while the forest opens up a space of possibility, transformation, and reinvention.

​

This is a journey many of us recognise, particularly in those first moments of independence and self-discovery, as experienced by Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando. This production leans fully into that sense of discovery. The forest will be a fluid, ever-changing landscape - shifting from rolling hills to a nightclub, from pastoral calm to psychedelic dreamscapes, all underscored by music. It is a space where reality blurs and identity becomes malleable.

​

Photos - David Monteith-Hodge 

​

​

​