This week, JustArts spoke with Barbara Spidle ’16, who was the director for  Hold Thy Peace’s “As You Like It.” This telling of Shakespeare’s classic had several modern twists.

JA: Why did you decide to direct the show?

Barbara Spidle: HTP people were looking for what was going to be the show for the semester, and I’d always loved “As You Like It,” and I had always wanted to direct it. I’m a senior, so this is going to be one of my last opportunities. I had this idea of setting it in modern day Boston, so I proposed it — well first I got my [production] staff together, and then I proposed it—and everyone voted for it.

JA: You chose to set the play in modern Boston, why did you decide to deviate from the original?

BS: That was part of the proposal, the setting. ... When you propose plays, people really ask you, ‘How are you going to adapt this plot point or these types, of characters to a modern world? What you do in your proposal is list your characters and what they would be like and how you see them. In my proposal, I was like, ‘the character Celia is basically like Phoebe from “Friends.”’ So, basically, you give people an idea of who they are in a different context. Everything in a play is a decision. Even not doing something is a really big decision. 

JA: What was the hardest part of directing?

BS: Obviously having the vision, what you want to communicate to your actors, but my actors were pretty great, so they were really able to understand what I wanted to do. I’d been in a lot of plays, and I’d helped build, do lighting, basic stuff. But I didn’t know a lot of the other things. So when I was trying to look at what the lighting design was going to be like, all my sound and my set, my lighting, my costume designers, they were all just able to teach me. I know what a front-light is now, and I understand how important a front-light is. Everyone always says the Thursday show is a really fancy dress rehearsal, so afterward I was like, “Okay, this is what we can do to make it even better.’”

JA: What makes this production of “As You Like It” unique?

BS: In a lot of ways, it was a straight portrayal of “As You Like It.” I didn’t change things that drastically plot -wise. I tried to keep it as straight as possible, but keep the comedy and the drama and the romance of that time and bring it forward. I thought I made it pretty relevant to a modern audience. For me, it was really just realizing how great Shakespeare is originally and just bringing it up to date. 

JA: What did you hope the audience took away from the show?

BS: Rosalind made some bad decisions, and she wasn’t the most kind person to some people in her life, but people go through hard times. Other characters didn’t do their best, but everyone still loved and supported each other, and I think that’s the only way to get through life — with other people.

  —Jaime Gropper