What initially drew you to Romeo & Juliet?
It’s the greatest love story in the history of world literature. Alternating between tender romance and exciting life or death swordfights with some of the most beautiful scenes and speeches ever written for the stage.
What are some of the challenges of working with a Shakespearean text?
Complexity of characters, difficulty that young actors sometimes have with heightened text, ensuring that the poetry of the language adds to the audience’s experience of the story, rather than obstructing it, giving such a well known story a fresh approach to keep both the company and audience members engaged and in this Shakespearean story, creating classic duels that reflect the ferocious world of the play
What is the most important story in Romeo & Juliet? What do you hope audiences will leave with?
Those people we waste vital life energies hating or even complaining regularly about are more like us than different from us. The things they value and fear and hope for are more similar to those same things in ourselves than different. If we remembered that, we would be much likely to empathize and much less likely to battle with those we have labeled “the other” and the world of the future would be a much better place for my grandkids to peacefully live.
Though Romeo & Juliet was first published over 400 years ago, it remains extremely popular today. Why do you think audiences keep returning to this tale?
It features all the key iconic elements of a great story or carnival ride. Awkward teenagers indulging in forbidden love, unyielding parents, secret friends who help the young lovers, incredible duels, tragic loss and a change in the survivors at the end for the betterment of all. That’s NY Times best seller material in any generation.
Are you employing a particular concept to help tell this story?
We are setting the story, like Zefferelli did in his film classic at the beginning of the High Renaissance – a time of great cultural change and opportunity, in Verona Italy during one week in July in 1499. There are two conceptual lanes we are trying to drive down – 1) that the Capulets and Montagues, for all their cursing about the other clan, are really almost mirror images of each other (they don’t even remember how the feud started almost 200 years before) yet it takes a tragic loss to realize this and 2) that their world is like a paper pop up book – the foundation of endless hate and competition they attempt to stand on is as fragile and easily torn as the pop up pieces who tear over time and then can’t be neatly tucked back into the comforting pages of the world of their book.
What does your directing process look like? Where do you begin?
Like all directors I begin with multiple readings of the script and once a time and location has been determined, intensive research into the social, political, historical, economic, spiritual and philosophical facts about that world. I make sure I’m aware of the rules for living in that world – what behaviors are rewarded and which punished.
Based on that I arrive at a concept (vision or emphasis to the story) that will drive the particular production’s telling of this story.
Once actual rehearsals begin, it’s my job to make sure the actors understand the text and the previously mentioned features and rules of the world of the play. I spend a lot of time coaching the actor’s asking them leading questions or providing with analogies from their lives to promote access to roles from different times and styles. The last part of rehearsals usually involves run-throughs of acts or the entire play where we continue to reinforce character arcs in the story, essential moments that must work effectively for the audience to truly experience the play, and the intrinsic rising and falling tempos of different sections of the script that add up to maximum viewer experience
What is one of your favorite moments in the script, and why?
The Queen Mab scene – five drunken boys singing songs badly, giving each other the business with master entertainer of the group, Mercutio, sharing one of the most bizarre dreams ever to hit the stage with his four party-on friends. I remember that scene fondly as the prelude to every wild college theatre party I ever attended – back in the days when theatre students sometimes partied instead of always diligently studying like today’s department majors.