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As You Like It: Finding Joy, Freedom, and Voice

Folger Education Professional Development for Teachers

Booking and details

Reserve Your Spot

Dates Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 8pm ET

Venue Virtual - Zoom

Tickets Free; registration required

Duration 1 hour

What happens when students encounter Shakespeare not as a puzzle to decode, but as a space to experiment? 

In As You Like It, characters leave the court for the Forest of Arden, where identities shift, language-play flourishes, and new possibilities emerge. This free, interactive virtual session uses active Folger Method practices to invite students into the play’s joyful and surprising language, helping them explore how Shakespeare creates room for freedom, reinvention, and expressive risk. 

Rather than beginning with lecture or background, participants will experience classroom strategies that position students as playful, thoughtful meaning makers. 

In this one-hour workshop, we’ll move through three classroom-ready activities: 

  • Enter the Forest of Arden Through a 20-Minute Play 
    Participants will experience a fast-paced 20-minute version of As You Like It, a performance-based activity that moves quickly through key moments of the play. This structure helps students track character journeys while keeping the focus on language, choice, and change. 
  • Spark insight through Tossing Lines 
    Using the Essential Practice of Tossing Lines, participants will explore how wit, challenge, and affection circulate between characters. This active, low-stakes practice helps students notice how ideas about love, freedom, and identity emerge line by line. 
  • Build shared meaning through Choral Reading 
    Participants will layer voices in a collective reading of the “Seven Ages of Man” speech, experimenting with grouping, pace, and tone. This approach reveals patterns in imagery and rhythm while encouraging students to consider how performance choices shape interpretation. 

The Takeaway 

Teachers will leave with adaptable strategies for helping students discover joy and agency in Shakespeare’s language, while building confidence, collaboration, and interpretive independence in their classrooms.