THE WHITE STAG AND A SHAKESPEAREAN OTHERWORLD
by Mahonri Stewart, Director
It's become a time-honored tradition to update and add new concepts to modern productions of Shakespeare--largely because he's been dead for over 400 years and can no longer object. One of the reasons I chose to direct As You Like It this year, rather than the nearly three dozen other Shakespearean plays from which I could have chosen, was because a particular concept had been formulating in my mind for almost a decade, one that began after I saw a production of the play at the Old Globe in San Diego that inspired me. That production highlighted the slain stag mentioned in Shakespeare's text, which Jacques mourns over. It's a minor moment in As You Like It, but the Old Globe transformed it into a beautiful, plaintive moment.
Over the years, I've thought of that production a lot, and that germ of an idea they gave me morped and transformed, as I connected it to the White Stag in Celtic (Irish) mythology that leads people to Otherworld. For those who don't geek out over world mythology like I do, Otherworld is the realm of the Fae (Fair Folk, Fairies, Nymphs, etc.) and Celtic gods... part after-life, part alternate dimension, part magical realm. Other writers have played with the tradition of the White Stag, from the authors of the King Arthur mythos to C.S. Lewis having a white stag lead the Pevensie children out of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
As I prepped for this production, I decided to lean more and more into other concepts from Celtic mythology, and even made changes to the text to fit the concept even better. The marriage god Hymen that Shakespeare includes in the end of the original version of As You Like It has now become Danu, the mother-goddess of the Tuath Dé Danann, the Celtic pantheon in Irish myth and legend... whom I have now inserted into other parts of the play, to become an omnipresent figure, watching over, protecting, and judging our characters. In this version, she also rules over the Fae... mythical elves, fairies, spirits, elementals, or whatever mortal names we want to attach to these beautiful beings from the mists of myth, legend, and folk tale. The Forest of Arden (a real place in Shakespeare's day, near his hometown in Stratford Upon Avon, which his mother's Mary Arden's family once owned) in our version is now on the edge of Otherworld, where the White Stag leads our characters, to be judged by Danu and the Fae, to determine whether they are worthy of entering the land of Fae and the gods.
Thus, those who already familiar with the play may notice that I have made significant additions and deletions to the text to tell this new version of Shakespeare's classic tale. I ask for grace from the purists who may be offended that I dare alter one word of the work of the great Master Shakespeare, whom I honor as much as they do. Yet, I like to think that the Bard would delight in the ways I have played with the text and mined additional meaning from the golden nuggets he has left us.
Some may be intimidated to write faux-Elizabethan text, but Shakespeare's style, form, and language have become increasingly familiar to me over my lifetime of studying him, to the point that I revel in it more than I do in the unraveling babble that we often pass off as the English language these days. I wrote a whole play called The Drowned Book about Shakespeare in iambic pentameter and pseudo-Shakespearean language... it's nothing new to me. Heightened language is one of the trademarks of my writing, and it was delightful to play with that style once again.
I am grateful for this wonderful cast, this brilliant production team, and this supportive school for allowing me the chance to extend beyond our normal borders to make room for this new (and old) Shakespearean vision. So, follow us into the dense trees of the Forest of Arden, to discover where the White Stag leads us.
