A MESSAGE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, KIMBERLEY COOPER 

In Verona,

The Capulets and the Montagues are feuding families. By chance, Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague fall in love at first sight.

The relationship is doomed. Juliet is already promised to another man by her father, and due to unfortunate circumstances, Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin and is banished from Verona.

Juliet cooks up a scheme with the Friar,

who has secretly married the young lovers before the cousin killing: she would drink a concoction that would put her in a death-like coma for 42 hours. The Friar would send a message to Romeo to meet Juliet at the family tomb. She would wake up, and the two would run off together, happily ever after.

Romeo never gets the message. Believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks real poison and dies next to her “corpse.” Juliet wakes shortly after Romeo takes his last breath and kills herself with his dagger. The families are reconciled by their mutual grief and the Prince ends the play with an elegy for the lovers:

“For never was there a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo”

425 years later and this play still shakes us. To me, Juliet is the most interesting character in the story, which is why I switched the order of their names for the title. I also wanted you to know it wouldn’t be traditional, although we do follow the story, sort of… it was all there, in the Bard’s original tale, but maybe you’ll see something you haven’t before.

It is such a pleasure to bring Juliet and Romeo back to you this season. It resonated so strongly with audiences when it premiered in 2017 that we took it on tour this fall and of course couldn’t resist a few Calgary dates. 

I hope you will love it.

Welcome,

Kimberley Cooper