As You Like It

The director for As You Like It asked me for “…a wonderful forest that the audience will want to run around in.”   From former experience with him, I knew he was a fan of Maxfield Parrish paintings.    Though I looked at a lot of visual styles for this show, I kept returning to that particular artist.

This is a classic wing-and-drop forest, with cut and netted drops.  The drops get smaller as they go upstage, creating a strong forced perspective even in the absence of straight lines.   We surfaced the platforms and ramps with mossy-looking artificial grass, and placed flowers everywhere.   The forest was very inviting, and loaded with entrances and exits.  It was a fitting setting for this comedy.

The period was early twentieth century.   The evil Duke Ferdinand was modeled after the facist dictators of the era, Hitler and Mussolini.   I designed variations of the swastika that used the letter F.   This motif flew in the Duke’s palace, and was used on the arm bands of his henchmen.