Love is merely a madness...

I saw on ATC a press release for a show called Like You Like It--the Gallery Players is performing it. It's a musical version of As You Like It set in a mall in the '80s. "Like You Like It is set in 1985, and the brand new Arden Mall is hosting a high school dance. Bookworm babe Rosalind wants to go with varsity wrestler Orlando, but she's never had the guts to talk to him. Rosalind disguises herself as a frat dude named Corey and learns Orlando's true feelings for her. But things get tricky when "Corey" complicates the lives of three other couples at Arden. Rosalind will do anything to get Orlando, even if it means showing up at the dance as both herself and Corey."

It sounds adorable but--frankly, I'd rather just see a good version of As You Like It again! God, I love that play. LOVE it. I had such a wonderful time in my scenes with my Orlando--"You are rather point-device as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other." The script is so incredibly musical--I almost felt like singing the lines, they fell off my tongue so easily. "...Like fringe upon a petticoat...as the coney that you see here dwell where she is kindled." An easy show, unlike the tragedies--every performance as Mercutio takes something out of me (as it should be, considering what I go through, both as character and actor). I remember as the performances went on, listening to Duncan's beautiful setting of "Blow, blow, thou winter wind..." feeling the cooling air upon my skin as the summer turned into autumn and the days lengthened.

Our production of AYLI was atypical for Holla Holla--we actually made many cuts in that production, and we had a concept, albeit one firmly based on what is already in the text (cross-dressing and gender identity). If we did it again, this time uncut, I wonder how long it would be? As always, the Rosalind has to have crazy chemistry with the Orlando, since they essentially do nothing but flirt in the forest for several acts.

Romeo and Juliet has been blurbed!

Check us out on Michael Dale's Showtime blog on BroadwayWorld.com! And don't Tybalt and Mercutio just EXUDE badassness!



I was chatting a bit with Clara Barton Green, Artistic Director and Producer of the Holla Holla Theatre Company (whose production of Romeo and Juliet ends its early autumn run this weekend with 3pm and 7pm performances both Saturday and Sunday) about some of the special challenges of outdoor theatre in public spaces. Aside from common headaches like arriving at the playing space to find people sleeping on the set, nearby children loudly at play and romantic couples getting overly demonstrative with their public displays of affection, she had a few other doozies to share; like the time in Central Park when another group had a permit to throw a loud roller disco party an audible distance from their A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Sometimes the problem is people who don't quite get the concept," says Green. "We've had joggers and bicyclists march grimly across the playing space, oblivious to the man in the jester outfit quoting verse to them, and children who wanted to play with us. We've even had the Park Enforcement Patrol drive right in up in the middle of the stage and ask to see our permit while a scene was playing!" (The actors kept going while others not in the scene scrambled to show them the paper work.)