07/23/2026
Director's Note From José Zayas:
“As You Like It” was the first Shakespeare I ever directed- I was 20. My production was about youth, love, possibilities, and because I was about to graduate from college, it was about the experience of being in a liminal environment before heading out into a new world, with fear, but with great hope.
I am revisiting the forest of Arden three decades later, and I am thinking about Time, about the way we experience it, how it transforms us, and how we find ways to sculpt it in order to achieve “contentment”. In short, I’m older, and I’m thinking about what it means to be “content” in one’s life. And sometimes I think about this too hard, and it makes me melancholy, and this play delights me because it makes fun of me.
So, here’s what is resonating for me:
This play is a Pastoral, but it’s a parody of the Pastoral, and it’s about the search for contentment, but it’s a subversion of this as a theme. The word “content” or a variant is used at least 10 times, and almost every time a character mentions being content, some calamity or hardship instantly befalls them- that’s terrifying, but it’s also hilarious.
Shakespeare is parodying a form of writing- the Pastoral and its implications that people find a better life by running away to the country- in order to make richly poetic points about how we come to understand our place in Time.
Let’s ponder Time together. And let’s laugh about it.
— José Zayas
📅 AS YOU LIKE IT runs through August 9th, 2026
🎟 Reserve your seat now at americanshakeapearecenter.com
Featured In Photo:
Director - José Zayas
📸Photo by Madison Patterson
