Trans What You Will theatre company are a grassroots group dedicated to staging William Shakespeare with all-trans and non-binary casts.  This July, their most ambitious project yet arrives: a production of As You Like It at The Space Theatre, running 22–24 July and livestreamed globally, with Elliot Page introducing the premiere from New York.  Director Phoebe Kemp‘s approach to the production goes beyond placing trans performers into a familiar Shakespearean structure. Instead, it reshapes the emotional logic of the play itself.

This follows a breakout debut last year, when a rehearsed reading of Twelfth Night, opened by Ian McKellen, sold over 2,300 tickets and raised thousands for trans charity Not a Phase. What began as a small, community-rooted project has since expanded internationally, including a Barcelona performance and a New York livestream.

Kemp uses the play’s two settings — a rigid court and the liberating forest — to explore an experience familiar to many LGBTQ+ people.  ‘The court world is very restrictive, you’re expected to be a certain way,’ Kemp says. ‘And the forest is where you find freedom, where you find community. That’s a journey a lot of trans people experience, being told what to be, and then discovering other ways of being.’

In this version, that journey is shared across the entire cast. ‘Every character realises there’s another way to be in the world,’ they add. ‘It’s a shared experience.’  The production is intentionally stripped back: a script-in-hand performance without traditional sets or costumes, where meaning is built through sound, movement and collective presence.

At the heart of the project is a focus on joy, and Kemp is very clear that joy can be as politically provocative as stories of trans pain. ‘It’s getting harder to be trans in the UK and globally,’ Kemp says, referencing increasing legal and social pressures. ‘A lot of the stories we hear are about trauma, which is important. But it doesn’t have to be the only story.’

Instead, As You Like It opens up space for: ‘Joy, play, freedom,’ they say. ‘Showing that we’re diverse, that transness doesn’t look one way. That we deserve to exist without constantly fighting.’