BLOG: Director’s Note

Hear from Margaret Jumonville, the associate stage director for Romeo and Juliet.

The story of Romeo and Juliet occupies a hallowed place in Western literature. Most of us have read Shakespeare’s play in high school, or seen the ballet, or watched a movie adaptation at some point. And yet we still return to these characters again and again, finding new moments of inspiration each time.  I believe our fascination with Roméo and Juliette is twofold: one, it returns us all to our first loves, those moments when attraction is joyous and young, fun and exciting. And two, it tells us of war.  We see two communities who are so violent towards each other that it ruins lives, loves, and families. Whether their story is spoken, sung, danced, or read, we journey with two souls who start as naïve young people and are quickly thrust through trauma, heartbreak and tragedy. And yet they choose to remain as one, standing on a precipice and jumping off into the unknown.  

This production began at Minnesota Opera in 2016, directed by Matthew Ozawa. Since then, it has travelled to many other cities, sharing its highly symbolic presentation of Romeo and Juliet with dozens of audiences across the country. How fitting that our telling of this tale, returning home to MN Opera after eight years, be filled with the voices and creative history of all those performances, making way for tonight’s cast.  

We begin, under the visual gesture of a single red rose, with a modern Roméo and Juliette, dressed in contemporary clothing. Onstage, cast members then “dress” the young lovers in Elizabethan costumes. From there, our heroes rebel against a strict society and bloody familial dispute to find their way together. In the final scene, we see them returned to their modern dress—this time, a poignant sword hanging above them. It is a sign that this story happens in any time, in all times. It’s happening now. Roméo and Juliette remind us that love crosses boundaries, fences, and borders. They show us our own layered definitions of loyalty, devotion, care, wild abandon, and they sing to us about how to be human.