What to Know
- Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival presented by the Independent Shakespeare Company
- July 10 is the 2024 kick-off
- The company announced that "As You Like It" is the 2024 play on April 23 (William Shakespeare's birthday); the festive evenings are also known for special events, like costume nights, dancing, and more
Entering a woodsy world, a realm that festively fizzes with an enchanting promise as adventures and escapades unfold, sounds like the throughline of a pastoral comedy penned by one William Shakespeare.
It may even bring to mind "As You Like It," one of the Bard's most beloved plays, a forested frolic that features elaborate disguises, cousinly closeness, pluck, fortitude, and love.
You may have enjoyed this bucolic bonbon indoors, which is always a treat. But audiences can enter the Forest of Arden in a lush location that is full of real trees this summer, thanks to the latest offering by the Independent Shakespeare Company.
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The group just unveiled its 2024 play, and, indeed, it has Rosalind and Celia at the lively leads. "As You Like It" will open the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival on July 10, giving fans of outdoor theater, picnicking and plays, and offbeat experiences much to anticipate.
The company has had a few recent jump-arounds, in terms of actual location, due to construction, but the Old Zoo at Griffith Park has long been its venue of choice.
The play's the thing, as Shakespeare so succinctly put it, but regulars of this pay-nothing summer series know that special evenings will pop up throughout a play's run, with costume events, dances, and other effervescent, join-in jamborees on the calendar.
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Call them complementary happenings to this complimentary happening, a way to up the air of whimsy and wonderfulness that playfully permeates the Free Griffith Park Shakespeare Festival.
And if you've never heard the speech featuring "all the world's a stage" live before, enjoying a performance of "As You Like It" will remedy that; it's the play that contains this wise and oft-referenced observation.
Pictured: Jacqueline Misaye and Bukola Ogunmola, photo by Grettel Cortes
