As You Like It
by William Shakespeare
Designed and Directed by Jo Ann Cimato
Technical Direction by Bill Grady
Fight Choreography by Enrique Ruiz

December 13, 14 & 15, 2012
Cast & Staff

As You Like It in Production
Restore the Shore
The Beacon School Project Sandy Days of Service

As You Like It Behind the Scenes

Bridge & Tunnel Girl Comes Clean or 
How Sandy Blew My Cool
November 2, 2012

I've been lying to myself for years that I'm from Brooklyn- not New Jersey - because Snooki makes us all look bad and I don't want to loose my "street cred" with my New York City hipster students. When I tell them I was born in Fort Green they respect me. When I talk about New Jersey they giggle. But let's call a spade a spade people. I'm from New Jersey. I own the gold diamond studded name-plate and I learned how to drive between apple fields. We left Brooklyn when I was 5, about two months before I started kindergarten and I moved out the summer after high school. That's some pretty formative time. I’ve lived in Brooklyn and worked in New York City most of my adult life, but I have a bridge and tunnel heart. I don’t just go home to do laundry you know. I go home because it’s home.

So I happen to be directing a Shakespeare play, As You Like It, and before that blasted Hurricane was so much as a sun shower, I set the play on the Jersey Shore. Our set design evokes Rumson, Asbury Park, Red Bank, Seaside Heights… the forest of Arden is a series of boardwalks emerging from my memory and coming to life on stage.

I lovingly created this staging of the play to mock my hometown, take a good dig at Snooki and her foolish mates and have a laugh with my friends and family who would get all the jokes. But now this little play is suddenly very very poignant.

So I’m going to use the resources I have with my theatre company and audience to raise some money and we're going to give it away and we're going to use our man and woman power to help. I'm looking for a community center or a theatre or some place like my school that we can partner with that was affected by the storm. Someone like us who needs us. If you know of any arts school or theatre or small business that is arts related, some mom and pop company that that might get over looked in the chaos- please let me know!

Because in my humble playmaker's opinion that is what the playmaking is for. It is for helping each other out. ♥