2009 SEASON    

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

I am often asked what my favourite Shakespeare play is; I have worked on more than half of his plays up to now. Most are often surprised when I tell them that to this day, Romeo and Juliet is my favourite of his plays.

To me, it is the play where Shakespeare was gaining confidence in his craft and in his use of verse. His language was expanding and he was becoming a master in structure and rhetoric. Romeo and Juliet would become his most famous along side of Hamlet.

To this day, I have friends who have been forced to marry "someone else", forced to stick to a partner of "their" religion or culture. This play resonates as much today as it did in Shakespeare’s time. It is a play that embodies what it is to be human and it transcends all boundaries and division.

My parents were born in Ireland and England; the ghosts of my past are cousins of the very people in this play.

I guess you could say that I relate to this play more than all the Bard’s other work. It is a story that repeats itself over and over with every new generation. It is a story that will remind us that no matter what colour we are, which religion we have faith in, what class we fall within, or what our sexual orientation is; we are, at the end of the day, beings who need to be loved by someone.

LEE WILSON

2009 SEASON