Media Archive

“Romeo and Juliet are two young people who have a vision of where the world is going for them and where the world could go. In many ways, they are determined to not repeat the path of their parents or the generations that came before them,” said director Diane Paulus.

[Sidi Larbi] Cherkaoui and [Diane] Paulus agree that “Romeo and Juliet” is an intensely physical text, not just in its violence but also in its sensuality… Cherkaoui said he admires the way Shakespeare so freely and frequently brings the conversation back to the body.

“Romeo and Juliet” is a full-circle moment for [Sharon Catherine] Brown, the daughter of two Broadway performers, who was so enthralled with the story as a child that she carried her paperback copy everywhere she went. Performing a show at A.R.T and working with Paulus are two other checks off her career bucket list.

“We’ve got a really interesting telling of this story that we all know so well,” [actor Clay] Singer said. “It’s a really interesting choice that helps lead to questions like ‘What is hate?’ and ‘Why do we hate?’”

Diane Paulus is a master at reinvention (see her versions of “1776,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “Pippin,” which featured Terrence Mann). Now she wanted to reframe “Romeo and Juliet” turning Shakespeare’s iconic work into something as much about love as hate. And she wanted Mann as the Friar. And she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“I really, really, really want people to hear and experience tap dancing in a different way. I want my audiences to know that this incredibly entertaining, exciting, and virtuoso thing they see on stage is really a deeply personal and profound message.”

Casel builds community wherever she goes… [and] works to—in her own words—“decentralize and expand creative opportunities and broaden the way audiences interact with tap dance.”

At its new location—enabled by a $100-million gift from David Goel ’93 and Stacey Goel—the theater will become a more community-facing institution, housed in a building the theater’s leaders have also praised for being more sustainable.

“We’ve had an incredible home at the Loeb Drama Center for the A.R.T.’s history, but we have been bursting at the seams,” said A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus. “And I think the opportunity to have a new home in Allston, for the A.R.T. to become officially a Boston theater, is exciting.”