Kent in the 1950s is the unusual inspiration for a new open-air production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Artistic director Rob Forknall explained why.

Known as the Garden of England, Kent’s countryside is recognised as among the most beautiful in Britain.

Groups like Campaign to Protect Rural England fight tooth and nail to keep the county’s green spaces thriving for future generations, something echoed in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It.

“I was struck by the similarities,” said Rob Fornkall, artistic director of the Kent-based Changeling Theatre company, who will perform the pastoral comedy at open-air venues around Kent this summer.

“Shakespeare was writing at a time when the English countryside was being rapidly transformed. The royal forests were being privatised and cut down and common land enclosed and turned into fields for sheep.

“Today we know about deforestation and the loss of rain forest in the Amazon but in 1600, much the same thing was happening in England.

“A whole way of life was being destroyed. Commoners and squatters who had lived in the woods for generations found their rights suddenly extinguished. Little wonder there were riots against enclosure such as the 1596 uprisings in Kent.

“It gave rise to a wave of nostalgia for rural life. Playwrights such as Shakespeare found sympathetic audiences for pastoral themes praising the innocence and simplicity of old country ways and contrasting them with the corruption and artificiality of court life.”

That Elizabethan craving for a past age of countryside innocence has gripped Rob strongly. In the play, Rosalind flees persecution in her uncle’s court, accompanied by her cousin Celia and the court jester Touchstone to find safety and, eventually, love in the Forest of Arden. Stories from Rob’s father about characters who fled urban life more than half a century ago are part of the reason why he set this modern adaptation in the mid-20th century.

“The 1950s saw rapid change in the Kent countryside” said Rob. “There was huge demand for new homes and one solution was to tear up woodland to build housing estates.

“Take Park Wood in Maidstone. Today it’s a housing estate with a busy supermarket and petrol station but in the 1950s it was simply a wood as it had been for centuries.

“My dad grew up there and remembers tramps living there. Some of them did casual labour like fruit picking, some of them built huts and shelters and slept in the woods during the summer.

“My dad remembers some amazing characters, like Singing Jack who lived in a hut in Park Wood which he built himself. Singing Jack had a big white beard and used to write his own songs and poems and perform them to earn money.

“Another character who lived rough in Park Wood at the time was known as the Captain. He wore a medal from the First World War and had a wooden hand. He said he’d made the hand himself from local wood.

“These people preferred the freedom of life on the open road to the constraints of urban living and civilisation. These ‘Gentlemen of the Road’ would move from village to village around Kent knocking on doors for a sandwich, cup of tea or a cigarette. Usually people would help them out.

“In those days, when the welfare state barely existed, there was a whole way of life which has since disappeared.”

As You Like It tours Kent, from Dartford to Sandwich, from Friday, June 22, to Saturday, July 21. Tickets £15. Box office 01622 758611 unless stated. See the full list of venues atwww.changeling-theatre.com

The full list of venues is:

Friday, June 22, Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 7.30pm

Saturday, June 23, Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 4pm, 7.30pm

Sunday, June 24, Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 5pm

Tuesday, June 26, Mote Park, Mote Avenue, Maidstone, 6.30pm

Wednesday, June 27, Charlton Park Foundation, 7pm, call 01227 831355

Thursday, June 28, Fort Amherst, Chatham, 7.30pm

Friday, June 29, Central Park, Dartford, 7.30pm, call 01322 343244

Saturday, June 30, Godinton House, near Ashford, 7pm, call 01233 643854

Tuesdany, July 3, Nurstead Court, Meopham, 7.30pm, call 01474 337774

Wednesday, July 4, Rochester Castle Gardens, 7.30pm

Thursday, July 5, The Secret Gardens of Sandwich, 7pm, call 01304 370220 or 01304 619919

Friday, July 6 Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 7.30pm

Saturday, July 7, Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 4pm, 7.30pm

Sunday, July 8, Boughton Monchelsea Place, near Maidstone, 5pm

Tuesday, July 10, Nurstead Court, Meopham, 7.30pm, call 01474 337774

Wednesday, July 11, Upnor Castle, near Rochester, 7.30pm

Thursday, July 12, Upnor Castle, near Rochester, 7.30pm

Friday, July 13, The Friars at Aylesford, 7.30pm

Saturday, July 14, Loose Amenities Association, 7.30pm

Sunday, July 15, Eastwell Manor, near Ashford, 7.30pm, call 01233 213000 NB no picnics, seating is provided, refreshments available

Tuesday, July 17, Biddenden Vineyard, 7.30pm

Thursday, July 19, Great Comp Gardens, near Wrotham Heath, 7.30pm

Friday, July 20, Belmont House, near Faversham, 7.30pm

Saturday, July 21, Dandelion Time, East Farleigh 5pm