As You Like It (Theater)

In celebration of the University of the Philippines’ Centennial, the duly recognized academic theater organization in Diliman, Dulaang UP, presented in September 2007 English and Filipino versions of As You Like It (Paano Man Ang Ibig), a romantic comedy written by the eminent playwright of the Elizabethan stage, William Shakespeare. The Filipino version was the translation of the late National Artist for Theater and Literature Rolando Tinio. The play was presented at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, Palma Hall Building.



As You Like It is considered by many to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, and the heroine, Rosalind, is praised as one of his most inspiring characters and has more lines than any of Shakespeare’s female characters. Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke, falls in love with Orlando, the disinherited son of one of the duke’s friends. When she banished from the court by her usurping uncle, Duke Frederick, Rosalind switches gender and as Ganymede travels with her loyal cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone to the Forest of Arden, where her father and his friends live in exile. Observations on life and love follow (including love, aging, the natural world, and death), friends are made, and families are reunited. By the play’s end Ganymede, once again Rosalind, marries her Orlando. Two other sets of lovers are also wed, one of them Celia and Orlando’s mean older brother Oliver. As Oliver becomes a gentler, kinder young man so the Duke conveniently changes his ways and turns to religion so that the exiled Duke, father of Rosalind, can rule once again.


At the helm of the UP production was Prof. Josefina Estrella (who bills herself as “Jose Estrella”, currently the artistic director of Dulaang UP. Estrella is an associate professor of the Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, College of Arts and Letters in Diliman. She finished her Master of Fine Arts in Directing in Columbia University as a Fulbright scholar.



Her artistic team was composed of Dexter Santos (choreographer), Amiel Leonardia (lighting designer), Lex Marcos (set designer) and J. Victor Villareal (music / sound designer).

This theater review touches in part on feministic images used by Estrella in her postmodern day interpretation of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” and juxtaposes the debatable issue on the representation of female characters in Elizabethan Theater.



Estrella’s Theater Elements

Set. One of the most influential elements in the history of theater performance is the set. It functions dramatically as conveyor of images of the physical environment and the magic it purports. In the fantastical modes of Shakespeare’s setting, the set symbolizes numerous meanings and representations. Chief among them are the forests that always transcend imagery of fantasy and mystery and a castle that perennially connotes hierarchy and bureaucracy.



The set was like the work of art of Saldy Calder (an American artist during the 1930’s), known in the visual arts for using aerial space in his abstract art. Marcos put hanging dried twigs and branches to perpetuate images of the forest Arden where many significant scenes transpied. In addition to the texture of the same scenario, a see-saw was used.



Marcos scenery evoke intuitive feelings. The concept of balance, geometrical shapes, imaging colors, and sculptured installations as studied in Humanities, Physics, and Engineering were executed as one major idea in the set. However, the mechanical illusions had some errors. The see-saw for example, did not function as intended.



Costumes. The costumes had a contemporary look, which proved the usefulness of ready-to-wear outfits. Though the major characters’ costumes were represented by color, they somehow lacked powers of solidity and elegance. The costume statement was aesthetically weak. Even the significant part wherein Rosalind (played by Nathasia Garrucha) cross-dressed did not succeed politically. The scene called for a ritual supposedly aided by the costumes; however, the director created a mishap. Jacques, one of the male characters, experienced the same fate on the choice of his costume, which was deliberately transposed into a female role-play.



It was difficult for the director and designer to achieve the costuming and transposing of the two different genders played by one actor. Conceptually, there was an attempt to manage with intelligence the role-play as perceived through the director’s aesthetic decision. But the costumes were inadequate and sloppy to purport gender transposition. It could have been better if the director and designer teamed up to achieve practical ways for the audience to better understand the play. The wonders of the costumes got lost in the way.



Music / Sound. Music plays a major role in any production. The music put together by Villareal was forgettable. The music did not create any emphatic impact on most scenes. In theater design, Villareal’s choice of music was quite incompatible with Estrella’s conceptual staging. This pastoral play should focus on fundamental music and soundscape. Any designer should ultimately aim for simplifying tests and experimentations in music especially if it is a Shakespearean play.

With Villareal’s execution, an atmosphere of uncertainty was felt that contributed several unnaturalness and irritability in the production.



Lighting. Most scenes in the play were intentionally darkened. Lighting problem had more to do with intensity. Romantic comedies are always staged with a lighter design. A director may still achieve the illusory mood effect provided by a designer, but to intensify darkness on stage may result to eye irritation and unconscious negative reactions from some people in the audience.



Rhythmic lighting was the loophole in the production. The intensity was totally different from the rhythm. The scenes of the play had a struggle, which were manifested sophomorically in the production. Leonardia, compared to his numerous engagements as a lighting designer, did not succeed in this production. In effect, some choreographic movements of Santos were a failure due to dark lighting. Theatrical elements must create a mise-en-scene for the stage play to succeed and lighting has a special function as it unifies almost all elements seen on stage. Lighting destroyed the overall technical composition of all elements of the production.



Acting. Shakespearean plays are usually an actor’s piece because lines are dramatically lengthy and usually hard to deliver. The ensemble style of acting was quite ordinary except for actresses Mailes Kanapi (Jacques) and Dolly Gutierrez (Celia). Both created an exciting visual acting styles and effective internal nuances. Kanapi, with her well-enunciated delivery of words and eloquent portrayal, precisely uttered the famous monologue “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” Gutierrez established herself as Celia effortlessly and candidly. At some point, with her wit in understanding the essence of Shakespeare’s subtexts, Gutierrez seemed to be one of the greatest actresses in Philippine contemporary theater. Mike Manotoc (Orlando), JC Santos (Silvius), Natasha Garrucha (Rosalind), and Mara Marasigan (Phoebe), though quite new on stage, memorably articulated a clearer character interpretation and intention.


Feministic Images

Estrella’s decision to make a woman play the role of Jacques indicates an imagery of women power. Putting Kanapi into the role of Jacques was dangerous but challenging. In the “classic” periods of Greek and Elizabethan theatre, women were absent from the stage, an absence that has been the object of feminist deconstructive activity (Aston, 1995: 16-17). This evolved with Estrella’s interpretation of Jacques’ character, which connoted a strong female persona.



The play has similarities with the film Stage Beauty directed by Richard Eyre and starred Claire Danes and Billy Crudup. Set in 1660, Edward “Ned” Kynaston (played by Crudup) was England’s most celebrated leading lady as women were forbidden to appear on stage. But Charles II forbade actors to play female roles and the prohibition ended Kynaston’s fateful career on stage. He then reinvented himself by doing male roles on the Elizabethan stage.



Somehow, Estrella’s use of role reversal was a crucial decision that resembled Kynaston’s. Decision to change is a form of empowerment on the part of Estrella since it is a form of experiementation or thinking out of the box that is needed in Philippine theater to induce more audience and entertainment and to apply certain theories in performance studies. The role reversal is also empowering and challenging because it is difficult to act out the role of the opposite sex.



As You Like It showed the complex plot of Shakespeare. Estrella made it more complex, if not confusing. Rosalind’s change of role to Ganymede can be considered as another image of strong feministic force, which Estrella successfully attained due to strong nuances of her actresses Gutierrez (Celia) and Garrucha (Rosalind-Ganymede).



Howard (2001) in Norton Shakespeare explained that Rosalind cross-dressed to become Ganymede whom Orlando wooed. The alias “Ganymede”, however, “commonly signified a young boy who was the lover of another (usually older) man…Provocatively, Shakespeare uses Orlando and Rosalind’s encounters to overlay a story of a male-female desire with traces of another tale of a man’s love for a boy” (1591-1598). This Ganymede-Orlando homoerotic relationship was given a contemporary version through the homoerotic or lesbian movements of Celia and Rosalind. In fact, contexts of homoerotic readings in the roles of Celia and Rosalind were felt more than the supposedly Ganymede-Orlando tandem. It reflected the radical feminist perspective of lesbianism.



Santos’s choreographic movements, as conceptualized by Estrella, explored the use of neck, arms, lips, hips, and legs to symbolize sensuality and vulnerability in Celia-Rosalind’s intimate relationship in the forest of Arden. In another scene, Rosalind was almost nude while Celia seductively helped change her identity into Ganymede using theatric dance movements. Gutierrez (Celia) used her sensitivity perfectly as her eyes, breathing, and hands “caressed” Garrucha (Rosalind) who reacted as if she had an orgasm with a male through a ance ritual of cross-dressing.



Synthesis



Up to now, exclusion of women in the Elizabethan Theater tradition is questionable and oppresive. Feminism is a compelling issue that theater historians have not resolved until now. Wilson and Goldfarb (2000: 197-198) explained that the absence of women in Elizabethan Theater “has led to interesting discussions regarding the representation of female characters. Cross-dressing (that is, dressing as the opposite sex) – which in today’s drama has become popular way to point out sexual stereotyping – had many reverberations in Shakespeare’s plays…We should note that cross-dressing in Elizabethan drama usually did dramatize negative ideas about women.”



Estrella was able to oppose the sexual stereotyping by using role reversal and injecting homoerotic interpretations. The attempt to have a feminist approach is a welcome development in this Elizabethan Theater.



Estrella had Anne Bogart as mentor, one of the pioneers of postmodern viewpoints in theater and whose performance theory applies specifically for all theater artists working for a collaborative end product. As an educator-artist, Estrella reflected Bogart’s viewpoint that “an actor’s craft lies in the differentiation of one moment from the next. A great actor seems dangerous, unpredictable, and full of life and differentiation. Thus, moments are highly-differentiated” (in Dixon & Smith, 1995: 11).



This idea was clearly demonstrated in Estrella’s As You Like It as veteran Philippine actors and actresses underwent the process of “disorientation”, “difficulty”, and “terror.” Bogart emphasized changes in the process and production of a new culture in theater by shaking the culture of every production (in Dixon & Smith, 1995: 5). Estrella’s stage direction, instead of using traditional staging, bravely attempted to rediscover the vision of Shakespeare when he was writing romantic pastoral comedy and applied Bogart’s viewpoints. Even if weak in theatrical elements, Estrella was able to pull through with the strong alliance of feminist actresses’ physical qualities that made her staging quite interesting.



Bogart’s influences on Estrella might also have created several confusion and disorientation among fellow Filipino artists. Are Philippine theater actors and actresses, designers, technicians, and managers ready for this Americanized version of Russian Stanislavski’s theater methodology? A closing thought for fellow artists and scholars.