He has a woman dress up like a boy in order to make a deep connection with the object of her affection. In the disguise, she can really be herself. We put on a mask to be more ourselves; we hide to reveal. This is the great contradiction about the art of acting, in fact.
Shakespeare was such a lover of theatre, and theatre is an illusion.
In the corrupt court there is no possibility to dream or to make contact to love. They are exiled to the forest as a punishment (but) this punishment turns out to be a gift. The gift of being in a place where there is no time.
Everybody - the naive, the courtly - everyone is searching for who they are in the play.
For me, As You Like It is like an ancient tale, it's like the myth of human existence, really. The myth of courtship, of love and of marriage.
There is a feeling of Elizabethan, and there's a feeling of timelessness. My desire is to make the past present, that it speaks to us today. A feeling of ancient ancestors who court and woo each other, so that it's kind of transparent and the audience can enter into this.
