The Queen's Players Present - As You Like It

The Revelers are at it once again and this time the performers, summoned by their patroness, the Danish Queen Anne, have set their sights on performing for none other than the King himself. Mr. Tilney, censor, and Master of the Revels, still holds sway in London, but Queen Anne is eager to see performed at Court, in a masque she is devising, parts of one of the great new comic works of English Literature, Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Still, it’s a dangerous undertaking, with Puritanism on the increase and the ‘actress’ as a concept still more than half a century away at the Restoration in 1662! This ‘Theatre in Education’ production is aimed at students in Years 8 – 10, addressing, in a dramatized exploration, some of the major thematic issues (specifically gender and the role of women in the theatre) that the play generates. The Revelers, a group of skilled female performers, who travel the English countryside, performing in country inn-yards and on festive occasions, provide insightful commentary on the major strands of the action in As You Like It as well as a dramatized discussion of the historical and cultural limitations they face as women in a ‘man’s world’. Audiences are invited to witness their development as a troupe from humble acrobats and jugglers to skilled performers of the great dramatic roles of the age, as they rehearse their parts for their big moment at the court of the newly-crowned King James 1 of England. The Queen’s Players, presented by Honours and Third Year theatre and drama students, promises an inventive performance of Shakespeare’s charming comedy, As You Like It. We offer not only an original insight into the characters and events that comprise the complex world of Elizabethan and early Jacobean England, but provide, in addition, both a dramatized perspective on the historical context within which Shakespeare and his contemporaries were writing and an interpretation of a play that has not often been seen on the stage in Perth. Performances are held in Nexus Theatre, Murdoch University. Facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=270678839637384¬if_t=event_invite