‘Romeo and Juliet’ keeps with the times in new FSU/Asolo Conservatory production

Director and acting teacher Jonathan Epstein has been thinking about his upcoming FSU/Asolo Conservatory production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for years.

It was initially planned to be presented outdoors four years ago at Selby Botanical Gardens until the start of the COVID pandemic forced all theaters to shut down.

Epstein, a longtime member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, teaches Shakespeare to the graduate acting students in the Conservatory and has directed productions of his plays for more than a decade.

He said he was even casting the play in his mind when the current class of second-year students auditioned for the program. “We hadn’t even invited them in yet, but I could see some of them in these roles.”

The Conservatory’s most recent Shakespeare productions have been presented outdoors, first at Selby Gardens, and last year on The Ringling grounds. This year’s show, however, is moving indoors to the Conservatory's home in the Cook Theatre, which will be turned into a thrust stage reminiscent of the historic Globe Theatre in London.

The Barancik Foundation has funded construction of the set that Epstein expects to be used for years to come for Shakespeare productions.

“It’s a real Elizabethan set we’re building and it will come back every spring,” Epstein said, adding that it will keep the audience closer to the action of the plays.

Early casting

When he first saw student Caitlin Rose during auditions for the program, Epstein said, “I thought Good Lord, this is Romeo or maybe Hamlet. She had such quick access to very strong passion and such quick access to complex thought, thinking two or three things at once.”

Rose may be a grown woman, “but as a boy she looks about 15. Those are powerful qualities you don’t usually get. Romeo and Juliet are underage and having these powerful experiences as adolescents do and handling them with as much wisdom as adolescents have.”

Rose, who was recently seen in the Conservatory’s production of “Miss Julie,” will star opposite Ashley McCauley Moore as Juliet, who was in the Conservatory production of “Clyde’s” earlier this year.

Epstein said he had similar thoughts about Moore’s appropriateness for Juliet and he could only imagine the pairing they would make as the tragic and doomed lovers from rival families who try to find a way to be together.

Epstein’s adaptation plays around with gender. Jonathan Acosta, for example, is “playing the Nurse as a woman, in full drag, with a large bosom and a full butt,” he said. “With Caitlin, I think it’s quite likely we’ll forget it is a woman altogether.”

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Jasmyn Ackah plays Mercutio as a male or a non-binary character, while Ayda Ozdoganlar plays a female version of Benvolio.

“When you do this, you find aspects of the play you didn’t think of before. Romeo is a young man, Jasmyn and Ayda play the mid 20s. You have two female-presenting folk making revolting vulgar jokes to a 15-year-old boy and he responds with fascination and horror. In some ways, it’s making them more explicit than you normally would.”

The cast also includes Elle Miller as Lady Capulet and Ibukun Omotowa and Rickey Watson Jr. (a third-year student) alternating as Lord Capulet. Friar Laurence becomes Sister Laurence in this version as played by Catherine Lucian. John Leggett plays Tybalt.

‘Romeo and Juliet’

By William Shakespeare. Directed by Jonathan Epstein. Runs April 2-28 in the Cook Theatre, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $32. 941-351-8000; asolorep.org/conservatory/season

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Shakespeare returns indoors for Asolo Conservatory ‘Romeo and Juliet’