Production Concept
“The Desert Inaccessible” – Leaving a Corporate Wilderness for a Desert Heart
Befitting Such Stuff’s no-frills and contemporary approach to Shakespeare, our As You Like It
opens today. In a corporate kingdom, ripe with greed and jealousy and subterfuge. Then, in Act 2,
banishment sends the lovers and the love-lost, not to rustic Arden Forest, but to Australia’s outback
heart.
Live vocals, percussion, and guitar bring a contemporary soundtrack to locate and accentuate
the outback exodus of our characters. And so, live renditions of U2’s journeying songs form our
theme music for the show.
With their 2023 album Songs of Surrender, U2 also found inspiration from the desert. “We love the
desert – it’s the purity of it. The desert’s a pure space, there’s nothing here. It is a magic landscape.
But it’s not just a meditative landscape, there’s danger too. You can feel that people have died on this
land” – Bono and The Edge.
Our task with As You Like It, is connecting and conveying the hidden dangers, and delights, of love
in Shakespeare’s story. But, unlike U2’s experience above, our outback setting won’t lead to tragedy.
In our story, the characters will encounter love’s extremes and they’ll struggle to keep their feet on
rugged ground.
But will they also discover “liberty, not banishment,” in their lives and in love?
Beautiful Day
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There’s no room
No space to rent in this town
You’re out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you’re not moving anywhere
You thought you’d found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
The opening song to our production, by U2.