Romeo and Juliet

I directed a fully comedic production of Romeo and Juliet, for the Wellesley College Shakespeare Society. Performed in an old Tudor house with period costumes from 1887 and John Cena WWE music cues alike, the play was intentionally irreverent and often flippant towards material I was attempting to problematize. Directing Shakespeare is a dialectic between modern and period, interpretation and translation, comedy and tragedy, immediacy and history. This adaptation of Romeo and Juliet reveled in these (false) dichotomies. This play aimed to translate Romeo and Juliet from tragedy to comedy: we dwelled not in the consequences of romantic individualism, but in each characters’ absurd, disproportionate, and outlandish (over)reactions to minor obstacles.

📍 Wellesley College Shakespeare Society

Director: Sabina Sethi Unni
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Technical director: Elise Griffin
Stage manager: Michelle Atwood
Sound designers: Val Gardner and Sidikha Ashraf
Dramaturg: Sarah Wendy
Lighting design: Grace Owen
Set designer: Laura Cassetty and Audrey Powers
Performers: Laura Cassetty, Victor Gao, Paige Befeler, Gabby Garcia, Sarah Wendy, Tiffani Ren, Paige Calvert, Naomi  Whitney-Hirschmann; Hannah Nies, Hannah Hicks, Val Gardener, Emma Johnson, Helen Redmond, Jessica Abowitz, Lindsey Gordon, Kalyani Saxena, Elsa, Sally Morris
Documentation: Joy McWilliams
Producer: Wellesley College Shakespeare Society