In April 2010 the University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) produced Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  Director Ray

Schultz, along with costume designer Jess Larson, a studio art professor, envisioned a “Green Production,”

incorporating, as exclusively as possible in its design elements, materials that were reused, recycled, or

repurposed.  Indeed, Schultz saw Shakespeare’s play with its characters’ flight from the oppressive city to

the green world of the Forest of Arden as an appropriate vehicle for such exploration and Larson, in turn,

experimented with the use of manufactured, man-made materials to express the crass consumerism of the

court in contrast to the use of recycled organic materials for the “natural” world of Arden.  The

production, through the construction of this dichotomy, was able to visually critique the environmental

excesses of modern urban living.