VERILY 80’S  ROMEO & JULIET

Speak Low Productions reimagines Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet as a gender-reversed story set inside a nostalgic 1980s American high school, while preserving Shakespeare’s original language. Against a world of family rivalry, ambition, expectation, and social pressure, Romeo and Juliet risk everything to pursue a connection that defies the roles others have chosen for them.

The production uses the fashion, music, and culture of the 1980s to give the familiar tragedy a fresh theatrical frame, while its gender-swapped casting invites audiences to reconsider ideas of identity, power, friendship, and belonging. Directed and adapted by Libby Letlow, the show marks the inaugural production of Speak Low Productions and features more than twenty Los Angeles artists.