Charlie Vaughn, a White, highly acclaimed theatre director, trying to escape some nasty rumors about his last production, comes to a small conventional college campus to stage a production of Romeo & Juliet. When he announces his startling directorial concept for the show it challenges the sensibilities of the campus community and upsets the expectations of Annie Rice, an ambitious, young Black acting student who feels the role of Juliet is hers. Turning to his new colleague Dr. Hughes – a thirty-year veteran of the theatre department – for advice, Charlie quickly discovers that Annie might not be the only one willing to resort to Shakespearean measures to get what they want.

Charlie Vaughn, an idealistic young director comes to a small conservative college campus to stage a production of Romeo & Juliet. When he announces his casting concept, he challenges the “old school” sensibilities of the campus community and invites the wrath of Annie Rice, an ambitious young actress who feels her time is due. Turning to his new colleague David Hughes – a thirty-year veteran of the drama department – for advice on how to handle the student’s challenge to his authority, Vaughn discovers that she’s not the only one out to bring about an end to his career. Intended as both homage and gentle parody of David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife model for a play, & Juliet is inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca’s The Public, and is a play about the pettiness and professional jealousy that festers within small communities (like academic departments) where rivalries can become so vicious, because the stakes are so low.

Author’s Note:

Lorca never saw The Public performed in his lifetime. The play was written during the same period of creative output responsible for his greatest and most recognizable titles—Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba—but belongs to a entirely different style of writing. Lorca was at work on a series of experimental plays that he considered “impossible,” both for their controversial subject matter, and their extraordinarily demanding staging. He was preoccupied with the theme of feeling like an outcast in society; and although in form and style my play couldn’t be more different that Lorca’s surrealistic original, it is that same preoccupation with being an outsider that informed the writing of both Annie and Charlie in my play.

& JULIET