This is not a love story.
This is a story about how people without positive support in their lives, especially people who have experienced trauma, can end up harming themselves, sometimes in big ways. This is a story about how an entire community can be brought to its knees by senseless violence and death. This is a story that shows us that when we don’t listen to one another, we hurt one another. This is a story that has remained relevant and important for over 400 years, for these reasons and more. The language in which this story is told may be unfamiliar to you--and can at times be difficult to fully understand--but I think anyone can understand and empathize with the feelings of fear, rage, infatuation, confusion, love, and sorrow the characters experience.
When I decided I wanted to do this show in this way, I was influenced by post-apocalyptic media like the Mad Max movies (especially the most recent, Fury Road), the Fallout video games, and even books like Station Eleven and World Made By Hand. I thought the aesthetic would look cool on stage, and that the Capulets and Montagues could be presented as two factions with an old grudge that might predate the supposed “end of the world.” I started to imagine what would be left after some sort of cataclysmic event that wiped out much of the world’s population and resources--what we could use for costumes, props, and set pieces to bring this vision to life. Clothes would be decades-old, patched and mended many times. People would decorate themselves and their spaces with whatever they could scavenge and make beautiful. I realized that, in the rubble of civilization, what would be left is… trash. Lots and lots of trash. Therefore for me, this particular production of Romeo & Juliet also became a story about consumerism and waste.
For months, we collected plastic bottle lids, milk jugs, and other trash: pop can tabs, rusty bolts, circuit boards from broken electronics, and yarn and fabric scraps. Once I started saving things like this and putting them into bins at my home, I realized how much of it we go through in a week, then in a month. I paid attention to how many times each week we took the trash out and what was in our trash. Moreso than usual, I noticed and picked up trash from the ground when I went out. It was appalling how many lids, bottles, cans, and other garbage was sitting around everywhere! And it wasn’t just the littering that got to me--it was the fact that all this stuff exists and will continue to exist for decades or even centuries!
So yes, we used some of this collected trash in the production. But it made me much more aware of what I purchase, consume, and dispose of. While individually and on a small scale, we can all take steps to reduce our waste--take a refillable water bottle with us instead of buying bottled water, clothe ourselves from thrift stores instead of buying “fast fashion” and discarding it a year later, maybe even drive an electric vehicle or bike to work--but ultimately, we need to see large-scale change, and we need to see it now to ensure a safe and happy future for all of earth’s inhabitants. Below are some steps you can take to support more sustainable living in our community, state, and country.
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