Season Selects: Romeo & Juliet

Considering which plays to see this season? Season Selects are here to help. Rediscover a classic this week as we explore Romeo & Juliet and learn why this summer's production is something to get excited about.

Romeo & Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Directed by John Langs

Fast Facts:

Playing: Hill Theatre | August 11 - October 7
Featuring: Nathan Barlow, Joshua Castille, Sun Mee Chomet, Jim DeVita, Tim Gittings, Kailey Azure Green, Casey Hoekstra, Rasell Holt, Jamal James, Josh Krause, Gavin Lawrence, Colleen Madden, Daniel José Molina, Ronald Román-Meléndez, Robert Schleifer, Lindsay Welliver
Genre: Shakespeare Tragedy/ Romance
Last Seen at APT: 2014
Go If You Liked: Hamlet (2022), Cymbeline (2021), Cyrano de Bergerac (2017)

About Romeo & Juliet

Oh, do we have a show for you. A play that makes every best-of list grows even more glorious with the marriage of Shakespeare’s spoken poetry with the soulful expression of American Sign Language. Every stanza a dance, the aural with the visual. Shakespeare’s words pirouette on the Hill stage, as his poetry swirls through the air, amplifying the impact of a story that fills and breaks our hearts, time and again. The breathtaking bloom of young love. A savage family rivalry raging in a state addicted to adrenaline and violence. Verona is a place where you move or you die. If anyone took a second to think, maybe things would turn out differently. Runs August 11 - October 7.

Chances are you probably already know the story. Even Shakespeare spoils the ending before the real action of the play begins.

“Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.”

Since the original (but unauthorized) version was published in the First Quarto in 1597, countless adaptations of the story have been shared onstage, on the screen, and in popular culture in general. Some productions have taken their own liberties and given the two star-crossed lovers an alternate ending, while others have transported us from far-away Verona to new and exciting locations, most famously New York City’s west side.

Romeo and Juliet feels timeless because it is. It’s a story about love and systems, family and foes (sometimes one and the same), and time, or more specifically, our lack thereof, to communicate with the ones we love. And in this production of Romeo & Juliet, how people communicate is central to the journey of the characters as well as the audience.

In this adaptation, actors Joshua Castille and Robert Schleifer, playing Romeo and Friar Laurence respectively, are Deaf artists who perform using a mix of American Sign Language (ASL) and gestural communication. It’s Shakespeare’s famous story in vivid and tangible movement. Other actors step forward to voice Romeo and Friar Laurence (more on that below from Artistic Director Brenda DeVita), and we as an audience are invited to explore the barriers, and the power, of communication as we watch Romeo and Juliet learn each other’s language and attempt to evade their clashing families.

A little bit more about how this production is progressing. In person rehearsals technically don’t start until the summer, so until then a team of folks have been hard at work creating video scripts to begin work. These video scripts go scene by scene and sync the signing of lines with the reading of lines, making sure the visual and spoken components happen at the same time, and are accessible to the entire cast.

All that is to say that this production is going to be something pretty spectacular, and there are only 18 regular performances, so be sure to save your spot.

Brenda DeVita Says

Romeo & Juliet. I didn’t think this play could be any more beautiful. And I was wrong. So our dear friend, and incredible director, John Langs brought this idea to us after staging a similar production at ACT Theater in Seattle. It's an ASL integrated adaptation, and the characters of Romeo and Friar Laurence will be played by actors who are Deaf. And there are these layers of nuance that live in all the decisions the artistic staff has made here. What does it mean that Benvolio is fluent in ASL, but Mercutio is not? What does it mean to Romeo’s relationship with Friar Laurence when you know Lord Montague never learned to sign? What’s it like to fall in love when you don’t speak the same language?

Want to learn more?

There's no shortage of educational content when it comes to Juliet and her Romeo. Learn more about the play's legacy and transformation over the past 426 years, why its universal message continues to transcend language and culture and just how relevant these star-crossed teens are in pop culture today.