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ctors Theatre of Louisville is an arts and culture organization as well as a social enterprise. Sharing experiences centered in a commitment to create a more just society, we dive into digital production to become an interdisciplinary laboratory for a storytelling (r)evolution.
This has been going on for a really long time, these resentments against other peoples, as well as the ways in which the pursuit of happiness, love, and self-actualization are complicated by systems of oppression.
Unfolding in a vibrant alternate universe that reimagines the classic story alongside our troubled moment, Romeo & Juliet: Louisville 2020 is a resonant retelling that illuminates how history reverberates in the present. Featuring a cast working together virtually from around the country, the production combines wonderful performances with new media technologies, ranging from documentary footage to video art and animation. As rehearsals and filming got underway, Executive Artistic Director Robert Barry Fleming, the director of this adventurous undertaking, spoke with Dramaturg Amy Wegener about the ideas fueling his production — which envisions the Montagues and the Capulets as prominent families, one Black and the other White, caught in deeply rooted animosity.
and killed without recourse. That the laws on the books are insufficient to provide justice, due to a longstanding legacy of injustice and the attendant relentless interpersonal enmity that seems so difficult to source. So when you think about this ancient grudge, that no one really remembers how it started since it’s become so normalized, the awakening because of a tragedy evidences a connection between the Shakespearean narrative and the contemporary story. The intersection of race (a social construct, not a biological reality), when seen through an economic, policy, and legal lens — to me, that’s all in Romeo & Juliet. This has been going on for a really long time, these resentments against other peoples, as well as the ways in which the pursuit of happiness, love, and self-actualization are complicated by systems of oppression.
Amy Wegener: Could you share your thoughts about the relationship between Romeo & Juliet and Louisville 2020? How do you see Shakespeare’s story in conversation with this time and place? Robert Barry Fleming: By imagining a heightened contemporary world for the play, I’m bringing this tale from the 16th century into, perhaps, a more immediate conversation, and that’s very purposeful — not in an effort to valorize Eurocentrism, but to say, “How is our experience shaped by the history informing this moment?” In some ways it’s still 1870, after reconstruction, where Jim Crow and Black Codes allowed wanton lynching of Black folks without protection. That’s the kind of thing we’ve seen with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor: that Black people can still be terrorized
Also, the intersection of these states of affairs with pandemics throughout history, where again and again you see a tragic disconnect between public health, politics, profit, and who has been prioritized in terms of safety. There are so many layers in Shakespeare’s play. And just as he mined many sources to tell a story that’s been around for a long time, we keep meditating
Juliet, played by Avery Deutsch and Romeo, played by Justin Jackson.
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