Actor Jo Patmore in As You Like It
On the fourth of January 2022, I make my way into a rehearsal room for Northern Broadsides’ UK tour of As You Like It for the very first time. This is my biggest professional acting job to date, the longest job I have ever done, my first ever professional Shakespeare and my first ever tour, so it’s safe to say I’m feeling a little bit nervous; the room feels bigger than I’m used to, the company larger, the tea and coffee arrangements suddenly far more complicated – gulp!
The first day of rehearsals is often an intense one – there is a sense of nervous anticipation hanging in the air, you’re bracing yourself for around four weeks of precious rehearsal time which will very quickly disappear, and you’re eager to make all the right impressions from the get-go. Shakespeare’s As You Like It is a beast of a play: full of peculiar twists and turns, well-known and much-loved scenes and speeches, and characters falling in love at the drop of a hat left, right and centre. I think it would be safe to say that all of us had at least one section of the script that made us think “just what on earth is going on here!?”
To sum it up – we have much to do, and not a huge amount of time to do it in – the first day is just the beginning.
The Cast in rehearsals
Yet, on that first day, you can’t help but notice a few very special things about this company – the group is beautifully diverse – many of us identify as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, we have actors of all different ethnicities, different body types, different ages, and actors with neuro-diversities and disabilities. There is a sort of tapestry of personalities, every one of them unique. Oh, and we are all unified by one very important thing… every single one of us is proudly and unapologetically NORTHERN.
And in this beautifully diverse group of passionate and talented northern cast and creatives something beautiful happens… a sort of family is formed. Now I’ll admit that spending 6 months touring the UK with any family is bound to have its intensities at times, especially if someone forgets their week on the all-important tea and coffee rota (here’s hoping that someone doesn’t turn out to be me!), but it’s also something that I think is pretty special, and something I feel incredibly grateful to be a part of. Especially after we recently spent vast amounts of time couped up in our houses and flats, unable to form our little “theatre families” or travel around performing to live audiences across the country.
Jo Patmore as William in As You Like It
As this particular theatre family forms and bonds throughout the intense rehearsal process, I go from having one role: Amiens (the musical outlaw), to two roles: Amiens and William (the Forest bad-boy), to three roles: Amiens, William and the Referee, to four roles: Amiens, William, the Referee, and the Tailor, and finally to five roles: Amiens, William, the Referee the Tailor, and last but most certainly not least – a Goat. In total, five characters, four hairstyles and seven costumes – and though it may seem hard to believe, there are other members of the cast with even more hairstyles and costumes than that!
In around four and a half weeks of rehearsal and tech time – we pull together a proudly queer production of As You Like It that I, in my humble (and absolutely not biased at all) opinion, believe to be fresh, engaging, inclusive and just the right amount of bonkers. We dance with hat-stand trees, quick change like there’s no tomorrow and sing many a hey-nonny nonny and a ding-a-ding-ding. We look out for those in the audience that might not be used to watching Shakespeare, the people that perhaps feel like Shakespeare plays don’t represent them, the people that think they don’t or won’t understand it, and we hope that we might get to be the ones to change their minds.
As You Like It by Northern Broadsides
So now, we that are merely players will go to our exits and our entrances, all across the country, (well, mainly in the north, this is Northern Broadsides after all) and offer it to you – our wonderful audiences, in the hope, as our dear Rosalind says, that after all is said and done “the play may please”.
by Jo Patmore
What being northern means to me
I think the thing I love most about being northern is the unity of it – there is a kind of solidarity amongst northerners that I’m not sure you find in the same way in other regions of the UK.
