Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
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What makes Sam Gold's production of Romeo and Juliet unique?
One sort of subtext of the play was Kit Conner's triceps are very prominently displayed all play along. But, you know, it just seemed to have this, like, very populist feeling where the people in the audience are being interacted with are— Offering their emotions, their sighs, their sort of exclamations. What was your theory of audience in making this show?
I was like, what if we make a show where that generation of audience member feels spoken to, feels like this is for me, feels like I can come to this, I feel oriented. And then what you give them is Shakespeare, right? They want to be there and they want to take in this ritual that really reflects something deep about our society. And they do. Sort of 18 to 25 is sort of our audience. And they are laughing at 400-year-old jokes. They are hearing – the wit, the poetry, the rhymes, the scansion, the sonnets, and they are responding to the language. They're not laughing at Kit's triceps. They're laughing at Shakespeare. You know, they're really hearing the play. So that was the goal. It was never... I did not mean to denigrate kids. It's not to be cynical.
I wanted the world on stage to reflect the world that that generation of audience member experiences in life, which is what Shakespeare did. Shakespeare was a populist, and Shakespeare was putting plays on to communicate very directly with his popular audience. The jokes were of the moment. There's a song referenced in Romeo and Juliet,
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