Campus Notes

The Defender reports that the director of campus ministry at St. Michael’s College in Vermont said that students should be supported in the learning experience provided by an upcoming performance of Romeo and Juliet, featuring two women as the romantic leads.

From the report:

“In Shakespeare’s time,” said Cathy Hurst, the associate professor of the theater department of fine arts, “all of the roles, male and female, were played by men.”

Yet unlike in Shakespeare’s time, the actresses are not pretending to be men in this production. Edwards [the Director] said he wanted the actresses to allow themselves to embody their roles, in whatever way
they felt was right….

He said he hopes training in martial arts and the overall strong sense of masculinity of the play will allow the females to step out of the identities society has given them…

“In our country right now, there is a movement to say there is something wrong with [same sex marriage or union],” Edwards said. “This is a form of forbidden love.”

And Burlington Free Press reported that the female junior cast as Juliet expected…

students might be initially confused by, but ultimately in favor of, the idea of having two women cast as Romeo and Juliet.

“St. Mike’s is a very open and accepting community,” said Ziegler, 20, a theater and psychology major from Hartford. “Everyone was really excited about it and supportive. You don’t see this type of production, especially at a Catholic college.”

Ziegler noted that the overarching theme of “Romeo and Juliet” — forbidden love, in the play’s case between members of enemy families — echoes the gay-marriage issue that has been settled legally in Vermont but is coming to the forefront in states across the nation.

“At the beginning of the process I think we were all concerned about this becoming political,” Ziegler said, but the production has a gender-neutral tone that simply allows it to explore the theme of love. “It’s not something I expected to be doing. But at this point I can’t see it being done any other way.”…

Her on-stage Romeo, first-year student Kit Rivers, agreed that the production touches on current events long after other relationship taboos defined by class and race have been erased. “Really the only forbidden love is same-sex,” said Rivers, 19, a theater and music major from Evansville, Ind.