At the end of the school year, it is traditional for the third-year acting class to present a Shakespeare play as its first performance in the main Drama Theater. This year's third-year class (Group 32), however, posed a dilemma. Shakespeare's plays-whether because women were not allowed to be actors in his time, or because their stories were not considered worthy drama, or for some other reason-contain very few women's roles. Group 32, with a total of eight women, would be very difficult to cast in a Shakespeare play. But this was the task that director Rebecca Guy was faced with.

Two households, both alike in dignity,

As the first line of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is spoken, we are introduced to two strongly opposing forces: two great families of equal power. A glance at the cast of characters makes these separate entities evident; Romeo's family, the Montagues, are listed together and separately from Juliet's family, the Capulets. A closer look, however, will reveal

Costume sketch for Juliet by Christiannne Myers.

something not immediately evident. The Montagues consist of Lord Montague, Lady Montague, Romeo, Benvolio, Abram, and Balthasar: six characters, of whom only one is female. (In fact, the only woman, Lady Montague, has very few lines to speak and is often cut from the play in production.) In the Capulet family, the central figures are mostly female. Of course, there is the strong male figure of Lord Capulet—but Lady Capulet, Juliet, and her nurse outnumber him, to make the Capulets an essentially female domain.

It was the "maleness" of the Montagues and the "femaleness" of the Capulets that entered Guy's mind as she tackled Group 32's problem. It occurred to her that the play could be done with an entirely male Montague household and an entirely female Capulet household. This would solve the casting problem, and illuminate the gender politics within the story. "It still seemed a good idea when I woke up the next morning," she says, so Juilliard's production was born.

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

Setting a Shakespeare play always raises a series of questions. How much scenery should be involved, considering that Shakespeare's plays were originally performed without any scenery beyond the doors and walls of the theater itself? What kind of costumes? The plays were originally performed in the dress of Shakespeare's time, not in the clothing of the time or place of the play. If there were no costumes or sets to suggest a different place and time, why did Shakespeare choose a different place or time to set his play?

To deal with these questions, Rebecca Guy, set designer Andrew Holland, and costume designer Christianne Myers looked at what was most important in the setting of the play. It had struck Guy, when rereading the play to prepare for the production, that the story was still powerful and relevant 400 years later: it is something that could still, very plausibly, happen now—the premise, of course, that was behind West Side Story. The story's timelessness was where Guy wanted to begin; the design should feel modern, but not iconically so. This would not be a Romeo and Juliet with Coca-Cola billboards and laptop computers. As the play is set in Verona, Italy, Guy talked to the designers about modern European architecture and clothing. She was interested in the sense of timelessness inherent in European design, the

Costume sketch for Romeo by Christianne Myers.

classical shapes and forms, the sense of the history behind it. It was also important to her that this setting feel physically hot; not only do the characters in the play frequently refer to the hot weather, but heat helps to create the atmosphere of passion and violence that is vital to the story.

Having met with each designer separately, Guy was pleasantly surprised that both came back with similar research. Both looked at warm red, yellow, pink, and orange colors to create the passion and heat, and both looked at classical forms reinterpreted in modern ways. Andrew Holland drew from the basic shapes of classical architecture interpreted in a sparse, modern way for the set, but heated up with passionate, vibrant colors. Christianne Myers was inspired by European designers like Armani and Versace, who dealt with classical silhouettes but broke them down in a modern way. It was important to her that the costumes "disappeared"—that is, that they did not signify a particular time and place.

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

"It's interesting," notes Guy, "that Shakespeare never tells us what this 'ancient grudge' actually is. There is no explanation in the play." She explained that she and the cast would certainly need to come up with a reason for it among themselves, in order to perform the play, but she believed there was an important reason Shakespeare never explains how the feud between the Capulets and Montagues began. It dawns on me, during our interview, that there is no explanation given for the fighting because the characters themselves have forgotten why they are fighting each other. The "grudge" is indeed "ancient," and the families continue warring without remembering the reason.

Guy was careful to point out that, in making the Montagues all male and the Capulets all female, she was not intending the play to become a war of the sexes. For her, it raised a series of other, more interesting issues—ones that Shakespeare was already raising in the text. The fact that Lady Montague is such a small role and is often cut speaks volumes about the world the story takes place in. In the Montague family, the female members of the household seem to have no voice, while

Costume sketch for Tybalt by Christianne Myers.

the people surrounding Romeo are very much a "boys' club." They banter in a traditionally masculine way about women, love, and lust; in the Capulet household, Juliet is surrounded by her nurse and mother and their particular, female take on men and marriage. Their insensitivity to Juliet's dilemma as she falls in love with Romeo but is forced to marry Paris brings up interesting issues about their ideas of the place of women in marriage and society. Indeed, Romeo and Juliet's love exists not only in contradiction to their families' feud, but also their families' views of love and marriage.

"This is actually consistent with the reality of family structures today," points out Guy. It is not uncommon to find families consisting entirely of women or entirely of men: single mothers with daughters; same-sex partners with children; or simply extended families such as those households in which aunts help sisters to raise the children. "This is not a concept imposed on the play, pervading every moment of it," Guy explained, "but it happens to be a banal reality in families today."

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.

I asked Guy how she deals with the fact that everyone knows this story already. She recalled seeing Michael Kahn's first production of Romeo and Juliet at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. She had standing-room tickets for the three-hour production but never noticed the time; the action onstage seemed so spontaneous and the production was so fresh and alive that she felt surprised by every turn of the plot, even though she knew the play quite well. That freshness is what she is aiming for in this production.

Guy also points out that Shakespeare himself tells us the story before it begins, in the sonnet that provides the play's prologue (which I have spread throughout this article). He wanted us to focus less on what happens, and more on why it happens.

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love
And the continuance of their parents' rage
Which, but their childrens' end,
nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

Give or take an hour!

The which, if you with patient ears attend,

Romeo and Juliet will be presented on May 14-15 and May 18-19 at 8 p.m. in the Drama Theater on Juilliard's fourth floor. A limited number of free tickets (required) are available at the Juilliard Box Office beginning April 30.

What here shall miss, out toil shall strive to mend. 

Craig Baldwin is a fourth-year drama student who has written frequently about drama for The Juilliard Journal.